24 August 2012

Building heritage knowledge online

The Heritage of Portugues Influence project homepage (source: HPIP)

The HPIP website provides information about heritage of Portuguese influence all over the world, researched originally by an international scientific team. At the same time, it is open for contributions by private individuals in order to improve, correct and keep it up to date.

The Heritage of Portuguese Influence Project stems from the desire to bring together, in a way that is accessible to everybody, information on cultural heritage of the Portuguese influence around the world. The project is based on the book Património de Origem Portuguesa no Mundo: arquitetura e urbanismo (Heritage of the Portuguese Origin in the World: Architecture and Urbanism), directed by the Portuguese historian José Mattoso. 

What makes the website truly attractive and innovative is what the project’s leaders call a "reciprocal snowball effect". The website, in fact, provides plenty of scientific information, carefully prepared by a community of experts but allows at the same time any person with relevant knowledge on the topic to participate, thus offering their input to the project.

This idea results from the awareness that in such a project it’s almost impossible to collect data on all existing sites and prevent it from becoming out dated, due to the world wide nature of the information involved and the continuous flow of new information about places, historical sites and their environments.

Thus, based on the content of the printed work, an interactive portal was setted up, organized by means of a geo-referenced database, targeted at "people from all around the world who have something to add or correct, either by means of written or graphic (photos, drawings, etc.) content".

The website, online since April 2012, was promoted by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (also promoter of the original book), that signed a protocol in July 2011 with the universities of Coimbra, Évora, and the Nova and the Técnica from Lisbon, to ensure its future management. Coimbra’s University will be the first institution in charge of the management of the project, a task that will be rotated between all the institutions mentioned above.

Author: Sara Dias Trindade

Source: Heritage of Portuguese Influence/ Património de Influência Portuguesa (HPIP) 

More infos: www.hpip.org/Default/en/AboutHPIP/PresentationoftheWebsite