2017 – 2022
Tiziano Terzani was an Italian journalist and writer. His extensive photo library, along with his personal and professional archive, are now online. Everyone can explore his travels and career by consulting his high-resolution photographs and documents, thanks to the IIIF technology.
the project
The Fondazione Cini Centre for Comparative Studies of Civilisations and Spiritualities, entrusted with safeguarding Tiziano Terzani’s library and archive, has shown a steadfast commitment from the beginning to both preserve and disseminate these valuable sources.
His writings, notes, press clippings, maps, photographs, and correspondences convey his vision of the world and can provide insights into the places and people he encountered.
In particular, the photographic fund of the archive – consisting of negatives and positives shot by Terzani himself – serves as a visual testament to Terzani’s journalistic reportages and books, narrating the contemporary story of Asia and the world: the fall of Saigon and the Viet Cong, the fall of Phnom Penh and the reign of the Khmer Rouge, the cultural revolution of Maoist China, and the economic opening of Deng Xiaoping’s China…
For this reason, the photographic prints have been primarily digitised by ARCHiVe, together with other delicate and relevant sources, prioritising unpublished documents, to preserve them digitally and make them accessible to the public.
The team at Fondazione Cini, in collaboration with Terzani’s heirs, dedicated scholars and ARCHiVe, worked diligently on the reorganisation of the documents, defining the archival structure, creating an index, and completing the archival description of the documents. The result of this collaborative effort is an extensive digital archive where it is possible to explore Terzani’s career through his articles and pictures, map his travels through his documents, and delve into the stories he narrated.
All this is now available online through an xml based platform.
objectives
With the aim of using digitisation as a starting point for studying and enhancing these unique materials, the primary objective of the project was to make the sources available online. To achieve this, it was necessary to reorganise, secure, and digitally record the documents.
Developments
1. Preparation phase
Following the archive donation, the Cini team, alongside Terzani’s heirs and dedicated scholars, meticulously examined the documents and planned a comprehensive reorganisation.
2. Establishing a digital archive
The ARCHiVe team, in collaboration with the Centre for Comparative Studies of Civilisations and Spiritualities, established an index and refined the archival structure. They constructed a web-based archive utilizing an open-source, native XML database (xDams). The restructuring of the archive and the development of consultation tools were informed by the interconnections and contents of the documents.
3. Recording of the documents
ARCHiVe digitised Terzani’s passports, the press accreditations (890 files) and the documents of the editorial project on Mao (274 files). Additionally, over 8,000 printed photographs, comprising the photographic fund, were recorded on both sides (totalling approximately 16,600 files), then segmented and post-processed using algorithms.
4. Dissemination
From 2022, the archive is now online and open to the public. The archival description will continue to be expanded to provide more detailed information and simplify the consultation. Ongoing efforts also include the digital archiving of materials stored on other media like floppy disks, VHS, and CDs.
Results
The entire Tiziano Terzani archive held by the Fondazione Cini Centre for Comparative Studies of Civilisations and Spiritualities is now accessible online. The celebrated reporter’s documents and thousands of photographs that he took during his countless long stays in Asia, can now be consulted on the Fondazione Giorgio Cini website.