Fuzzy Archives.What Kind of an Object Is the Documental Unit of Oral Archives?

摘要

The paper addresses the question of what constitutes the basic documental unit in the domain of oral archives and stems from the digitizing and cataloguing experience of the Gra.fo project (SNS, UNISI & Regione Toscana). Considering the extremely high variety of archives collected in field research by linguists, anthropologists, ethno-musicologists, and amateurs, it aims at identifying a set of criteria that could help cataloguers in editing oral documents. Genre, aims, research protocol, and communicative context are the guide elements chosen for the definition of the documental unit, which may occasionally appear controversial, since audio documents can be contextless and not supported by accompanying material.