COMPUTER SCIENCE FOR CULTURAL HERITAGE

The goal of the course is to introduce the basic concepts of computer science and their overall impact, with a particular focus on applications for cultural heritage and preservation. The course comprises both theoretical and practical (laboratory) lectures. The theoretical lectures will cover key concepts of computer science, along with computational tools for the digitization, storage, organization, analysis, and presentation of cultural heritage resources. The laboratory sessions will involve the analysis and visualization of data using the Pandas and Seaborn libraries of the Python language, as well as the creation and querying of a simple SQL database for a museum.

At the end of the course the student will be able to:
- Understand the basic concepts of computer science and apply them appropriately
- Understand the role that computer science plays in the preservation of cultural heritage and society
- Analyze big data and generate professional plots using the Pandas and Seaborn libraries of the Pyhton language
- Design and interrogate a simple SQL database

No particular prerequisite is required.

Theoretical lectures:

- History of computer science
- Data representation
- Algorithms, hardware, software
- Networks and World Wide Web
- Relational databases
- Images, audio, and video
- Social impact of computer science

Practical lectures:

Python - Pandas and Seaborn:
- Introduction to the Python language
- Load, visualize and filter tables with Seaborn
- Lineplots, barplots, histograms

Database:
- Introduction to SQL
- Defining the schema of a database
- Inserting data
- Simple queries: select, order by, pattern matching, aggregation
- Creation of a simple database for a museum

M. Lazzari, Informatica umanistica, terza edizione, Mc Graw Hill, 2021
B. Codenotti, M. Leoncini, La Rivoluzione Silenziosa, Le Grandi Idee dell’Informatica alla base dell’era Digitale, Codice 2020
Alfredo M. Ronchi, ECulture: Cultural Content in the Digital Age, Dordrecht : Springer, 2009

Open and multiple-choice questions.
For the laboratory part, the student will be asked to write very simple Python and SQL scripts as seen during the laboratory lectures.

Frontal lessons and laboratory sessions.

Italian

written