The conference is the closing event of the three-year research "I manoscritti etiopici in Italia: documentare, catalogare, conservare", funded by the DAAM. It provides an opportunity to reflect together and exchange ideas on selected topics suitable for understanding manuscripts cataloguing as a task of crucial significance in Ethiopian and Eritrean studies. These topics pertain to the definition of textual, physical, historical and functional features and have been acknowledged on the basis of, on the one hand, some specificities of the Ethiopian manuscript culture and, on the other hand, a still inadequate understanding of specific phenomena that limit an appropriate categorization and, consequently, a convenient cataloguing description. Over a two-day period, about twenty scholars from different European academic centres will be dealing with the matter, sharing experiences and programmes.