Preserving Literary Heritage on Floppy Disks the Case of Franco Fortini

The poster deals with the challenge of managing Born-digital Literary Archives preserved in obsolete media. The nature of these archives is interesting as it reflects changes in writers' working practices in response to digital technologies, thereby redefining the boundaries of their archives. The main case study of the research is a hybrid archive: the collection of the Italian poet Franco Fortini (1917-1994), preserved at the “Biblioteca di Area Umanistica” of the University of Siena. This collection includes, in addition to papers (correspondence, manuscripts, typescripts, prints), also 3.5'' floppy disks. Some of these floppy disks contains a copy of Fortini's last computer, including material partially used for the posthumous edition of Un giorno o l’altro (edited by Marianna Marrucci and Valentina Tinacci, Quodlibet 2006), one of the first Italian cases of an edition derived from a hybrid archive. In 2022, a campaign was launched to recover and secure the floppy disks along with other materials from special collections. The recovery activities include bit-by-bit extraction of the materials contained in the floppy disks. Employing forensic methodologies provides a rigorous approach to the study of electronic texts, suggesting a demonstrable materiality (through bits and data traces visible via MFM representations) for phenomena we call virtual. Digital forensics can verify relationships and filiations between different documents, even apparently unrelated ones, as well as highlight an author's compositional and writing strategies.