Abstract:

The School of Management and Industrial Studies (ESEIG-Vila do Conde) of the Polytechnic of Porto (IPP), through the bachelor degree in Information and Documentation Sciences and Technologies (CTDI) was approached in 2015 by the parish of Vila do Conde to develop a joint project with the intention of preserving the identity and the cultural connection of Vila do Conde with the fishing activity and its fishermen - that have in Caxinas and Poça da Barca one of the biggest communities of fishermen in the country - through the creation of a cultural and touristic project called “A Rota do Pescador” (The Fisherman´s route). In the school year of 2016/2017 the bachelor degree in CTDI has started to be taught in the Porto Accounting and Business School (ISCAP), also from the Polytechnic of Porto, and the project has continued in the same lines that had been established. The increasing importance of the informational heritage as an agent that generates value and as a distinct identity is, nowadays, a key element to create, distinguish and enrich tourism activities based on the realities of the local heritage. As a matter of fact, the tourism is now seen as strategic for the local development. This intends to be a multifaceted project that was born from the collaboration between a local government body and a higher education institution, that aims to collect, recover and recreate information, traditions, as well as inventory resources covering several forms of heritage.

Actually this project assumes that the information is more than ever something that must be preserved, and therefore we have gathered the information about the fishing and gastronomic traditions of these communities, as well as about their own use of language and we have carried out the mapping of a touristic pedestrian route – All this work was developed by some students, within the scope of the curricular unit of internship, in the third year of the degree and always under the supervision and guidance of the teacher responsible for these internships. So far, it was possible, through this project, to infer the importance of the collection and retrieval of information skills that the information professional holds, and its implementation in alternative scenarios and working realities, in this specific case, in collaboration with a local government body and in the development of a project of cultural and touristic nature.

Another aspect considered, is the acceptance given by the communities under consideration to the efforts developed in order to promote and preserve this traditional knowledge that at the end represents the information that has been conveyed from generation to generation.
This project is still in progress, we intend to develop more work in the scope of this institutional collaboration, creating, for example, a family tree of these communities, an electronic catalogue, a glossary with a visual navigation system and a website for the project.

Keywords:

Interinstitutional collaboration, The Fisherman's Route project, Local development, Informational heritage.