IASA 2017 Annual Conference

The domain of digitized cultural heritage is gradually spreading around the world.
One of the most obvious advantages that arise from the common effort to digitize and make public the documentary heritage of the various countries is undoubtedly the ability to approach the funds dedicated to traditional folk culture.

In 2015 RAI Teche initiated the recovery and digitization of the Italian ethnic music archive, collected between 1947 and 1962 for RAI by Diego Carpitella with the collaboration of other major ethnomusicologists. It is a collection of about 370 reels that contain more than 4,000 songs, the ownership of which is shared with the National Academy of Santa Cecilia in Rome and that is still the most impressive and significant systematic search of national ethnofonic heritage.
The documents, belonging to a heritage handed down over centuries by oral transmission, were recorded mostly in places of origin and their complex has been surveyed and analyzed using rigorous scientific criteria.

Simultaneously were recovered the television and radio programs devoted to the issues not only musical but also anthropological and cultural sectors of the Italian society existing before technological innovations made in twentieth century.
They have already been digitized and cataloged about 140 documentaries and television and 132 radio programs but, because the search is in progress, the number is likely to increase.
TV and radio reportages and documentaries provide an unmissable evidence of a pre-industrial world now completely disappeared and are, moreover, a valuable record of history of Italy and of RAI.