INTPHOTO is a worlwide database of alleged UFO pictures, now counting about 700 images available as standard digital files. As of the originals, their quality is not always good and most of them are clearly faked, but their value as visual documents, of the UFO myth rather than the UFO phenomenon, is exceptional. This kind of evidence may be studied not only through image processing software looking for possible clues of faking, but mainly as a survey about the evolution of shapes and portraied UFO features throughout times, the motifs you may find in photos, the tricking techniques and the reasons of a so huge availability of documents from all over the world. INTPHOTO doensÆt want to be a comprehensive international catalogue of alleged UFO pictures, at least for the time being: the evidence you may find in all over the world is so huge that a single researcher cannot afford such a task. Merging of different projects could be a reasonable solution. Project "ITALIA 3" has been started in the early æ80s by the CISU member Paolo Fiorino to collect all the Italian cases of close encounters of the third kind, including fringe events such as contactee cases, bedroom visitors, psychic contactism and strange creatures not directly associated to UFO phenomena. The collection is now in excess of 600 entries including the basic data and the original sources stored in a standard database format.

AIRCAT is a catalogue of the Italian sightings having civil or military pilots as witnesses. Managed by CISU members Marco Orlandi and Renzo Cabassi, it now includes more than 120 cases currently stored into a standard database software for personal computer. Each entry offers several data, including a short description of the sighting.

Another interesting project where the computer plays a basic role is called "1978". It refers to the collection of the complete documentation related to UFO cases taken place in Italy and reported by the press during 1978, the year of the big wave. It is possible to estimate in 2,000 the number of sightings during that incredible year. The project also involves the collection of all the generic UFO- related newsclippings published by the Italian newspapers and magazines in 1978, just to be able to carry out an extensive analysis of the press coverage of that time and its bias on the development of the wave itself. A database program is used to store all the information about the collected newsclippings, including titles (a study about how journals presented the subject through titles has been planned and funny interesting results are expected) and a short sighting summary. Among the data included in each record there are some ôkeywordsö taken from the text of the press articles, in order to carry out a preliminary experiment: to find possible language patterns in the journalistsÆ treatment of the UFO subject and compare them with tales coming from UFO witnesses. In order to make the information evidence of the 1978 UFO wave even more complete, original newsclippings are being to be scanned and linked to each database record as image files. When looking up the electronic archive, the researcher will be able to have access to all the record information, as well as to the readable image of the newsclipping itself. The same philosophy has been applied to another running Project called "Origins". It deals with an analisys of the press coverage during the early very interesting years of the "flying saucer" debate in Italy, namely between 1947 and 1952. Preliminary statistical results from the project are expected in the first quarter of 1996, together with the availability of the whole computer-based catalogue.

Scanning newsclippings, especially those directly related to UFO sightings, is becoming a regular activity in many CISU projects, including the maintance of local sighting databases run by the representatives of the Center. The reference of the scanned newsclipping image is linked to each case, so that it could be displayed when accessing the case itself. This is a first step towards the availability of real multimedia UFO catalogues, where researchers can find different kinds of documents just at their fingertips.

Even though not very well known abroad, Italy offers a lot of examples of advanced use of new communication facilities applied to UFO research. As the American colleagues, Italian ufologists have established a UFO WWW site on INTERNET in Italian and English language, and a network of BBSs (Bulletin Board Systems) offering a large selection of UFO-related text files and images, as well as areas for common discussion and presentation of the latest news and sightings. The network is called UFONET (don't confuse it with UFONET UK, a similar network established in the United Kingdom) and counts more than a dozen of different sites all over Italy. The discussion forums have been visited by hundreds of people each month: one of the most direct benefits for CISU is the even more complete coverage of many areas of the country, so being able to get news about alleged sightings in a very short time. These and other kind of information (also coming from all over the world) are weekly offered to all UFO buffs and whoever interested in the subject through a phone service named (UFOTEL). Just paying for your phone call, you may listen to a three-minute report updating you about the latest news from the UFO scene. A similar service is also available through "Videotel", an on-line service run by Telecom Italy (similar to the well known French Minitel) you can connect through a special terminal supplied by the same company. CISU has also three 24-hour automatic answering machines in Northern, Central and Southern Italy to allow witnesses to report their own sightings, plus others locally.

CHAPTERS
• Information as Evidence
• Computers and UFO Research
• Ufology Goes On-Line
• The Italian Example
• ITACAT and TRACAT
• PHOTOCAT and the Question of Photographic Evidence
• Other Computer-Based Projects
• Multimedia Catalogues

• Introduction

Introduction

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