Several international agreements aim to protect linguistic diversity and intangible cultural heritage. The 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage seeks to preserve "language as a vehicle of the intangible cultural heritage" (Art. 2), which gives communities "a sense of identity and continuity, thus promoting respect for cultural diversity and human creativity" (Art. 1).

The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, proclaimed in 2000, states that "the Union shall respect cultural, religious and linguistic diversity" (Art. 22). Earlier, in 1992, the Council of Europe approved the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. This Charter defines such languages as those that are "traditionally used within a given territory of a State by nationals of that State who form a group numerically smaller than the rest of the State's population; and different from the official language(s) of that State; it does not include either dialects of the official language(s) of the State or the languages of migrants" (Art. 1).
More recently, the European Parliament's Committee on Culture and Education approved a 2013 report on endangered European languages and linguistic diversity in the European Union. This report explicitly mentions tools to support documentation, education, social inclusion, research, and use of new technologies to promote these languages. It also advocates teaching two or more languages from an early age to benefit children's language learning and encourage intergenerational transmission of languages.

The current project aims to digitize an Italian dialect corpus produced by Manzini and Savoia in 2005. It receives funding from Italy's National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), specifically under the CHANGES program (Cultural Heritage Active Innovation for Sustainable Society). This program financially supports sustainable research, innovation, and conservation practices within the cultural and creative sectors.

Digitizing this corpus has particular significance for linguistic research and language preservation. Converting it to a digital format will help preserve the linguistic data and enhance accessibility for researchers worldwide. Digital accessibility facilitates knowledge dissemination and opens up new avenues for diverse linguistic contributions to the study of Italian dialects. Documenting dialects at risk of disappearance also helps protect languages and encourage community preservation efforts. The digital corpus provides rich empirical data that can contribute to linguistic theory and our understanding of language variation and universals.