A Survey of the Digitisation of Collections in Italian Typographic Museums

The paper presents the findings of an extended research study intothe status of the digitisation of items concerning pre-digital typographic techniques and technologies, to be found in Italian museums. The research reveals the main Italian association of printing and paper museums do not share any common protocol on how to conduct digitisation on their collections. The paper explores: (1) the cultural context and the relevance of the topic with regard to the renewed interest in long-neglected typographic forms and sources; (2) what is meant by ‘typographic items’ and their digitisation (archiving and display); (3) what the corpus of typographic museums we have taken into consideration is, namely the Italian Association of Printing and Paper Museums; (4) the methodology that was implemented to define the type of digitisation of items and the accessibility of the digitised files to museum staff and/or external users; (5) the possibility of expanding the research framework, by including other actors – other museums not belonging to the Association and the many printing workshops scattered across the country, which have saved traditional printing equipment and supplies with the intent in part to preserve their historical value, but primarily for their functions and the possibility of bringing them back into use. (6) Some final remarks, including a comparative study of the Italian case studies and others in Europe. The paper includes the survey implemented, that can be scaled to other museums and archives in other to gather comparable information.