Introduction: Diaspora, Identities, Memories

This special issue of the New Review of Information Networking (NRIN) brings together a selection of articles presented at the 1 International conference The Commonwealth and its People: Diasporas, Identities, Memories, which took place in Valletta on 24–26 June 2015 (http://www. um.edu.mt/events/dim2015). The conference was conceived as an academic forum addressing topics related to the identity of diasporas and the role of memory institutions in documenting and preserving this type of complex heritage. The forum attracted participants from Albania, Australia, Barbados, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ghana, India, Ireland, Malta, New Zealand, The Netherlands, Turkey, UK, and USA; some articles were contributed from international organizations—the Memory of the World Committee of UNESCO contributed a session on preserving diasporic heritage in war times. While the Commonwealth was taken as an inspirational example for the academic debate, the broader interest to the issues around diasporas, their heritage, and the role of the digital technologies in capturing dispersed hybrid records attracted the participation of scholars working on other communities. The academic debate on diasporas, identities, and memories is per se interdisciplinary. The collection of articles that is published in this special issue illustrates this variety and the need to develop further common crossdisciplinary methodological approaches. In a subtle way, some of the topics addressed in this special issue are continuing links to some of the themes addressed in the previous volume of NRIN, Shaping our Legacy: Preserving the Social and Cultural Record, as they contribute additional views from countries where practices in documentation and creating solid digital records are still under developed. Moreover, they also capture complex social phenomena which accompany large-scale migration and cross generational migration. Thus, the article “Karamanlidika Digital Library Proposal: Reconstructing the Past of a Specific Diaspora” by Selenay Aytac (Long Island University, United States) looks into the integration of digital resources and the use of social media to bring together memories of Karamanlides, a Christian