A HGIS for exploring eighteen-century manuscript gazettes of Bologna (Italy)

In Europe, from the fifteenth-sixteenth century, a frequent means for public dissemination of information was given by manuscript news. In Bologna, a manuscript gazette, with weekly issue, circulated at least from the second decade of the eighteenth century. It was intended for the public and reported almost exclusively local news of various kinds, from worldly events of the nobility to crimes. This gazette, collected by A.F. Ghiselli (1634-1730) in his Memorie antiche manoscritte di Bologna and today preserved at the University Library of Bologna, constitutes a precious source of information for the study of the Early Modern city. Aim of the present study is to test the possibility to create a Historical Geographic Information System (HGIS) for the collection, display and search of the news reported in this gazette. For a sample of gazette issues, the news was classified according to the typology and collected in a database; therefore, they were georeferenced on two coeval maps basing on the locations mentioned in the news themselves, having at disposal from the maps the representation of the city with toponyms of streets and places. The same data were displayed by means of a 3D digital model of the ancient city derived from one of the maps.