Sovraimpressioni

Sovraimpressioni turns a digitized First World War photo archive into a collective identification desk. Volunteers study images from General Cesare Lomaglio's collection and add the place names, people, events, periods, and everyday details that a scan alone cannot explain.

What is Sovraimpressioni?

The source collection reaches beyond formal military history. Its roughly 4,000 photographic objects include wartime settings, daily service, landscapes, and family moments, while more than 2,500 digitized First World War images form the core of the public-description effort. The satisfying part is the scale of the clue hunting: a uniform detail, a handwritten sign, a ridge line, or an unfamiliar building may help an archivist place an otherwise anonymous scene. You are not restoring pixels or guessing at a grand narrative; you are supplying careful, concrete observations that can make the archive easier to search and study.

What you can do there

• Describe visible details in First World War photographs
• Help identify people, places, dates, events, and contexts

Why we picked it

This project gives slow looking a practical destination. Old photographs often arrive online beautifully scanned but thinly described; Sovraimpressioni invites the public to help close that gap one visible clue at a time. It is a specific, humane use of crowdsourcing, with value for both curious visitors and future archival research.

How to get the most from it

Begin with what is plainly visible before attempting a location or date. Note uniforms, signs, vehicles, architecture, landscape features, and relationships between people, then separate confident identification from a tentative suggestion. The project is in Italian, so keep a translation aid nearby if needed, and consult its tutorial before submitting descriptions.

Good to know

The working Zooniverse interface requires JavaScript and was not executed during this check, so contribution controls, account behavior, progress, mobile layout, and accessibility remain unverified. The photographs include wartime and military material, though the exact mix of current subjects was not visually inspected. Site Stumble cannot embed the page because its framing policy is restricted to Zooniverse itself.

Who made it, and when?

Archivio di Stato di Torino is the credited creator or organization.