Under the Surface: Interpreting Technical Metadata as Archival Narrative

This study examines the role of technical metadata in the preservation and analysis of born-digital literary archives, focusing on the collections of contemporary Italian authors Silvia Avallone and Paolo Di Paolo housed at the Centro Manoscritti of the University of Pavia. Through the Digital Preservation Workflow (DPW) software developed within the Pavia Archivi Digitali (PAD) project, the research investigates how automatically extracted metadata can enhance understanding of digital documenti across temporal, authorial, and textual dimensions. The methodology combines forensic techniques with archival approaches, employing both Apache Tika and ExifTool to extract and interpret technical metadata. The comparative analysis reveals significant inconsistencies between file system metadata and embedded document properties, highlighting how creation dates, editing times, and authorship information require careful contextual interpretation. Key findings include the discovery of systematic discrepancies in temporal metadata due to time zone normalization, the identification of complex authorial networks through creator fields, and insights into compositional practices through editing time and revision counts. The study also addresses the challenges in interpreting ambiguous metadata fields, particularly in legacy document formats. This investigation establishes technical metadata as a valuable resource for both archival description and philological inquiry, capable of reconstructing creative processes and documenting authorial behaviors. However, it simultaneously emphasizes the necessity for interdisciplinary approaches that combine archival science, philology, and computational methods to effectively preserve and interpret contemporary literary heritage in digital formats.