Herodotus Project: a digital bridge to Cyprus and north Aegean region's rich heritage

euronews (in English)

The Herodotus project is a unique initiative to preserve a range of historical archives from Cyprus and the North Aegean. It includes audiovisual, music and broadcast material and collections of local newspaper archives.

Transcript

00:00Cyprus and the Greek Aegean Islands share a common background.

00:05They've rescued over 10,000 files of unique historical value

00:09and digitised them into an open access database

00:12thanks to the EU project Digital Herodotus II.

00:20The uniqueness of our archive

00:23is because we were the only TV and radio station from 1957 until 1992.

00:32So we try to digitalise because it's very important for our society.

00:37It's a part of European history.

00:41The files are preserved at the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation's archive.

00:45It provided hundreds of hours of audiovisual, audio and music files

00:49from 1950 to the 90s from a wide range of topics.

00:53It's been an archaeological process.

01:02First we have to fix it, to digitalise it,

01:05and after to recognise who is who in the pictures,

01:09in the documentaries, in the radio.

01:12So it's a complicated procedure.

01:16Twenty-seven workers carefully selected, restored,

01:19documented and preserved the materials.

01:22Today the Digital Herodotus platform hosts 20%

01:25of the total archive of the national television.

01:31Choosing the material was not an easy task.

01:35We had to choose only 400 hours of the material

01:42from a total of 2,500 hours.

01:49The total investment in Digital Herodotus was around 1 million euros.

01:5385% of the budget was funded by the EU

01:56and 15% by the Cypriot and Greek governments.

02:02More than half a million pages from local newspapers

02:05are also digitised into the open access database.

02:09It's a very easy engine to use.

02:13When I search something, then I get 10, 20 videos.

02:20The history of Cyprus and the Aegean region in one click.

02:24Up to now it's had 330,000 visitors from 70 countries.

02:30An accessible platform also for the most vulnerable.

02:34These students from the School of the Deaf of Nicosia

02:37are working on a documentary.

02:40During the Turkish invasion of 1974,

02:43this school served as a refugee camp.

02:46The project connects them with their history.

02:59For more information visit www.cdc.gc.ca

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