The Catalogue, from an instrument for knowledge and conservation to an educational tool for cultural heritage: the Italian system and its perspectives

Cataloguing to identify, categorize, know and safeguard cultural heritageCataloguing a product of human activity as cultural good upholds the attribution of cultural value to that good.Its acknowledgement as cultural good entails the consideration of its material aspects – which are fundamental to grant its correct preservation – and of its complex historical values which define it as being created in a precise place, period and context. It represents an important evidence of a specific cultural milieu.Cataloguing allows a descriptive decoding of the good through a series of attributes having reference to space, time and context. It starts from an analysis of the situation which defines the good at present in order to reconstruct its history. It is expression of a cognitive process which has to allow an interpretation of the good as wide and articulated as possible, in order to emphasize its specificity and its relational nature.The Italian system and its perspectives: cataloguing to educate to cultural heritageSpecific attention deserves to be given to the Italian system for digital cataloguing of cultural goods, which aims at constructing and maintaining the national catalogue of cultural heritage in its territorial context, through the unification of the methodologies for cataloguing according to the recent laws. The national catalogue promotes and supports the construction of territorial plans, the circulation of checked data by means of the shared Information System, the production of data bases of services, the integration of added extra resources directed towards cataloguing and documenting.This national catalogue of cultural heritage allows to design educational activities in two different directions: at first, to acquire competences on identifying cultural goods and cataloguing them (as the first and unique Italian university master realized at the University of Modena does); at second, to organize educational activities – by interweaving competences and institutional activities – which allow a correct and adequate valorisation of cultural heritage by using cognitive data provided by the catalogue of cultural goods.The more working cognitive instruments refer to a cultural heritage spread on territory, the more useful are the catalogue data. Such data allow to programme and organize – in cooperation with interested authorities, associations, etc. – educational activities addressed to the different types of audience, from schools to adults, to persons with disabilities, to migrants, by activating a widespread knowledge of values and significances of cultural heritage itself, which are essential to safeguard the memory and the identity of the community.