The Linked Finding Aid as a Platform for Textual Research: The Case Study of the Giuseppe Raimondi Archive

This paper makes new suggestions for rethinking archival finding aids by means of linked open data. It does so by outlining some features of a conceptual model for writers’ archives developed for the Digital Library of the Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies of the University of Bologna. The model, extending CIDOC-CRM/LRMoo, allows for the representation of complex collections of interrelationships between heterogeneous archival entities, especially texts. It also adopts named graphs as a way of enriching the finding aid with additional and possibly competing interpretations by researchers. Through the case study of Giuseppe Raimondi’s archive, the paper suggests how the adoption of linked open data can broaden the role of the digital finding aid to serve as a platform for archival and textual research.