Mèmora: Piemonte's new open-source digital platform for cultural heritage

Mèmora, a new public digital platform for describing cultural heritage from archives, cultural institutes, and museums, has launched in Italy. It is the first of its kind in the country. Developed technically by CSI Piemonte, the same entity that created the Guarini software in 1994 for regional cultural heritage cataloging, Mèmora is built on open-source technologies including CollectiveAccess. The platform integrates thousands of documents, photographs, posters, and videos from hundreds of entities, currently hosting 70,000 digital objects, 500,000 descriptive records of artistic assets, and 500 inventories of historical archives. These numbers are expected to grow daily. The project is the result of two years of work in collaboration with the Compagnia di San Paolo and the Polo del '900, building on the earlier 9centRo platform. Mèmora unifies previously separate archival and museum domains into a single web interface, ensuring preservation and accessibility over time. CSI Piemonte President Claudio Artusi stated that the platform represents a collective project for professionals, cultural institutes, and citizens, aiming for a modern valorization of the region's artistic and cultural heritage.