Le trame invisibili. Nuove modalità di esplorazione online dell’Archivio storico della psicologia italiana

Abstract

The paper describes an innovative visualization modality to present online contents and relationships of the web portal of the Interdipartimental Research Center Aspi – Historical Archive of Italian Psychology (Milano-Bicocca University). Established in 2005, Aspi is aimed to preserve, inventory, digitize and valorize psychologists and psychiatrists documents of the XIX and XX centuries. The web portal www.aspi.unimib.it offers direct access to documental sources with critical notes and historical and scientific contextualization cards to describe biographies and disciplinary evolution, interdisciplinary and institutional connections and personal relationships among protagonists. The portal is a performing research tool for historians and scholars, which enables a direct access to the archival sources. It also allows contributors to collaborate with the editorial committee by publishing their research results. A custom software directly access the open source DB CollectiveAccess to extract data and visualize them dynamically and interactively, according to three main criteria: people, places and time. In particular, gravitational graphs show relationships between individuals (e.g. scholar, professor, co-worker, relative), between people and locations where they worked. Timelines and maps show on the other hand birth/death places and birth/death dates, where institutions were located and when they were operating.