Palaestra

The Canussio Foundation's on line Studies on Classical Antiquity





Introduction

The Niccolò Canussio Foundation, in the aim of promoting the dissemination of scientific evidence obtained through its annual conferences and of broadening the circle of beneficiaries of its activities, has for several years invested in making an electronic edition of its annual conference proceedings available on the Internet. These conferences are held at the foundation's headquarters in Cividale del Friuli. The remarkable response to the initiative is proven by both the growing number of access hits to the Foundation's website (an average of over 14,000 monthly hits over the past year), and, indirectly, by the evergrowing interest in the scientific debates organized by the Foundation, which every year draws more and more scholars and aficionados to Cividale del Friuli.

Thus, together with the other electronic resources made available on the website, the Canussio Foundation has aimed to promote the use of the World Wide Web as a way of spreading high standard scientific knowledge and quality instruments beyond the strictly academic community, to a wider public, composed mainly of young researchers and students of classical antiquity.

This project represents a step forward in the same direction, offering a new service to the scientific community as well as to all those interested. The objective is to create a virtual space where scholars in Classics can, in turn, make a direct contribution to progress in the field of ancient studies.

The use of the Internet for the dissemination of scientific material in the humanities is still open to innovation; there are, in fact, only a few sites that offer quality and scientific control guarantees, which are, instead, the rule for journals and series of studies destined for print. The Canussio Foundation thus proposes the publication on the Internet of essays on the classical world.

Palaestra sets out to reach two objectives: the dissemination of information and research results obtained from researchers on the Web, in a way that surpasses the limits of printed circulated work. At the same time, the site guarantees - through the monitoring of Scientific Committee members and the publication in a site accredited by the digital version of the Proceedings of the Foundation's Conferences - a formal control of accuracy and originality equivalent to that of traditional printed work. Through this initiative, a second goal would be to contribute to the growth of quality materials on the Web and to have the site be recognized more and more as a mean of dissemination of material on the classics.

As a result, the already prominent role of Cividale del Friuli will be reinforced as a center of excellence for the study of ancient world in both its more innovative and rigorous aspects, with positive effects reflecting on the city hosting the seat of the Canussio Foundation.