The FEF promotes and supports projects to create computer applications for the management of databases - which have become an essential tool for historical-philological and literary studies. At the same time the FEF contributes to reflection on the significance and the consequences on the cognitive level of new technologies as they are used in the field of research in humanities.

In the first half of the 1990s, such questions gave rise to four conferences in collaboration with the IBM Italy Foundation (1993-1996) which belong to a series of conferences on digital Humanities, followed by numerous applications and much experimentation, in particular with the elaboration of several databases to process data on medieval texts and manuscripts (for example, BAI in 2003) and with the development of a prototype for the description of illuminated manuscripts (Stilus, also 2003).

In the first decade of the new millenium, the FEF has considered the subject of the web, contributing jointly with SISMEL to the creation of an integrated system of databases, available for consultation through the portal MIRABILE, which aggregates external projects as well. These experiences of interoperability between databases have served in the creation of TRAME, a portal dedicated to experimentation with forms of transversal searching of the data present online concerning medieval manuscripts.

On the subject of issues and opportunities for the integration of different databases, the FEF is taking part in two European projects: a COST Action on medieval studies and computer technology (2011-2015), and CENDARI (2012-2015), a project on digital infrastructure.

contact Emiliano Degl'Innocenti emiliano@fefonlus.it