Visual and Audio Resources
The use of images in historical research is no longer much of a novelty. Instead, the use of audio resources, such as interviews, songs and speeches, has been relatively limited. Notwithstanding this, various resources of this kind are already available online.
Indeed, the Internet would seem to be a medium particularly suited for handling these kinds of materials, since it is intrinsically concerned with handling different languages and with functioning as a multimedia.
Once again, the archives dedicated to collecting the materials in question and making them available online are predominantly conservational in purpose and can are geared towards serving various different purposes.
The BBF portal includes two sections entitled Pictura Pedagogica On line and Vox Pedagogica On line.
The first consists in a picture library, containing thousands of prints, photographs and drawings belonging to numerous specialised libraries. The material, only a part of which has been developed with specifically educational and didactic ends in mind, can be consulted through various indices, such as date, source, author or subject.
Vox Pedagogica, instead, provides a range of interviews with 10 experts in the field, referring to their own experiences in the development of the discipline of the history of education and of the German school system.
The interviews, although they are few in number, can be consulted easily, inasmuch as they are indexed by subject and divided up into small an easily accessibile audio files.
INRP is, once again, rather different. The digital video library is monographic in character and aimed at bringing together the Iconographie dans les ouvrages pour l'enfance et la jeunesse de Gutenberg à Guizot collection. The archive provides a complete overview of images published and in textbooks and used in public schools from 1750 to 1834.
The prints are divided up by subject and can be searched on the basis of various criteria.
In the section entitled Histoire et archives orales de l'enseignement, it is also possible to view over 400 files regarding policies implemented by the Ministry of Education after the second world war (a part of which will be available online).
In addition to these specialised databases, audio-visual resources for the history of education are also available online on the websites of the various National libraries, such as the Library of Congress(Prints & Photographs Online Catalog and SONIC, Sound ONline Inventory and Catalogue), the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (Banque d’images) and the British Library (Images Online). Many institutions dedicated to research into didactics and education also offer audio-visual resources online.
Cf., for example, Indire, who have prepared a database of over 17,000 images (DIA), put together for didactic purposes but replete with materials relevant for the study of the history of education35.
What makes these non-specialised resources particularly useful for historians is the fact that they offer detailed indices and multiple advanced search facilities, which make it possible to narrow down research criteria, especially from a chronological point of view.
These sites also contextualise all of the images published, providing precise details as to their production, publication and conservation.
35 http://www.indire.it/archivi/dia/index.php.
