The Methodist and Waldensian Cultural Heritage’s portal is the unified access point to the catalog and to the descriptive information of all the cultural assets; it is an essential part of the ABACVM Information System ABACVM, created by the Waldensian Board to inventory, catalog, communicate and give value on-line to its cultural heritage.
ABACVM’s starting point is a new outlook on heritage: archives, libraries, photographs, museum pieces, historic, artistic and liturgical objects, buildings, places, customs, memories, etc. are no longer entities divided by category, but are instead part of a complex system and are elements of a group of substantial relations. The project’s main objective is to create a single virtual archive for all the Methodist and Waldensian cultural heritage assets physically conserved in churches and institutions throughout Italy.
Thanks to the re-reading and re-organizing of the traditional descriptive information according to an ontological-semantic interpretation, it is possible to perform complex searches within the entire heritage’s archive. From these searches the user obtains not only the descriptive information on the single element or group of assets chosen as a result, but also the reconstruction of the context in which those objects are located; this draws attention to the relations that exist between the heritage’s elements, the subjects that define them, the places where they are set and the people they are tied to. Through the portal one can search the catalog, discover heritage sites and itineraries, and learn about Methodist and Waldensian history.

The portal is aimed at those who (regardless of whether they are professionals or not, or specialists or not) use it casually, occasionally, purposefully or systematically. Because every user has extremely variable needs, which depend on their cultural profile, their formative aspirations, and their own, even temporary, curiosity, the portal is designed to offer two levels of use: a didactic one and a specialized one.
The first one allows users to receive general information about all the cataloged assets and to learn, from various points of view, the history of the Waldensian and Methodist community, the places and people that characterized it. The specialized level uses filters to allow searches to reach the highest possible level of detail, by accessing the complete descriptive catalog card.