The so-called digital revolution has radically changed our habits, behaviours and expectations: nonetheless, the research fields related to humanities and social sciences still often do not exploit enough the potential of the digital instruments. The new capillary connections and exchange potentials triggered by digital networks are besides already changing the way cultural resources are retrieved, analysed, elaborated and even created, but many crucial actors (consultants, scholars, professionals, up to generic users) still seem to neglect these possibilities in favour of their "traditional" approach.
Furthermore, cultural resources still show an intrinsic distinction between tangible and intangible according to the source they refer to and, although it has been commonly acknowledged that any cultural asset is always the product of both aspects, for the latter little has been made so far to allow a satisfactory usage of digital sources. Even less to integrate tangible and intangible digital resources in a common environment.
Starting from the already available digital content, this research was aimed at design a new Digital Cooperative Environment capable to respond to all the mentioned-above issues so to improve the retrieving, sharing, reuse and creation of cultural resources referring both to tangible and intangible values. The scientific methodologies, procedures and tools designed within this research will contribute to the transformation of European cultural wealth into an actual asset valuable for different stakeholders, institutions and the entire economic sector related with culture (tourism, cultural and creative industries, They could also serve as an important instrument also for those agencies, companies or public authorities dealing with the transformation/management of cultural assets in which the cultural values represent a major component.
