#archives Archives - Page 2 of 3

August 10, 2022August 10, 2022

EDT Workshop New Business & Conceptual Models: Self-copying service in the researching rooms of the Spanish State Archives

Miguel Ángel Bermejo Alonso, Head of the International Cooperation Service at the Spanish State Archives, gave a lecture on the Spanish State Archives self-copying service at the European Digital Treasures workshop ‘New Business & Conceptual Models’, held on 23^rd of May 2022 within the #28 ICARUS Convention.

Miguel Ángel holding his lecture during the workshop.

He presented the overview and results of this pilot project, which regulated the possibility for the beneficiaries of 2 of the archives of the Spanish State Archives system—the Archive of the Royal Chancery of Valladolid and the General Archive of Simancas—to obtain up to 50 reproductions of documents by using their own photographic devices.

After this experience, which was implemented for 4 months—from October 2021 to February 2022—several beneficial effects have been already acknowledged, such as the reduction of waiting times, with the consequent relief for the always overloaded reprographic services and the management cost savings. Read about this self-copying service in detail in our report here (p. 3) & check out the video on our YouTube Channel here.

Let’s present our workshop speaker

MIGUEL ÁNGEL BERMEJO ALONSO is the Head of the International Cooperation Service at the Spanish State Archives. Graduated in Librarianship from the University of Salamanca and in Information Science from the University of Alcala de Henares. He has been a member of the Corps of technicians in Archives, Libraries and Museums since 2017.

For more than 9 years he worked as a librarian at the National Library of Spain until joining the Corps of technicians of Archives, Libraries and Museums in September 2017. He started in the Archive Coordination Service with the management of grants to private non-profit organisations until December 2017 of the same year, when he moved to the International Cooperation Service, where he currently works on different European projects, such as EDT Project—he is a member of its Steering Committee—or Archival trace on migration AtOM—as a member of its Executive Committee.

He develops other bilateral cooperation collaborations and provides support in the Technical Unit of the Iberarchivos Programme.

Recordings

All sessions of the workshop were recorded and will be presented here on our BLOG within the next weeks.
You can now check out the recording of Miguel Ángel Bermejo’s presentation HERE.

Additionally you can read the full report about the workshop HERE.

EDT Workshop New Business & Conceptual Models: Introduction & first speech “Identification of potential for revenue generation”

Yvan Corbat, senior consultant at Grupo DEX and partner of the EDT project, led and moderated the European Digital Treasures workshop ‘New Business & Conceptual Models’, held on 23^rd of May 2022 within the #28 ICARUS Convention. He gave a general overview of the aims of the EDT project before the other partners of the project gave their individual presentations about new business models for the archival field.

Within the workshop, Leonard Callus, National Archives of Malta, held a speech about “Identification of potential for revenue generation” and explained how the National Archives of Malta undertook great efforts to identify and analyse new business models to generate revenue. Read about it in detail in our report here (p. 7) & check out the video on our YouTube Channel here.

Let’s present our workshop speakers

YVAN CORBAT is senior consultant at Grupo DEX and URBACT and UIA (Urbact Innovative Actions) validated expert, with particular expertise on cultural management and international cooperation. He has over 25 years of professional experience in international programms and project management, with particular focus on the strategic and operational management of multilateral-funded projects to support local/regional development, and on the design, implementation and evaluation of EU Programmes.

He has worked as advisor of the Minister at the Spanish Ministry of Culture and Chief of Staff for the XXV Anniversary celebrations of the Prince of Asturias Awards, under the auspice of UNESCO. In September 2020, he has been selected as expert for the Capacity Building for European Capitals of Culture project and, since 2020, he is volunteering as Solar Impulse Expert for the World Alliance for Efficient Solutions.

LEONARD CALLUS forms part of the National Archives of Malta’s management team and is responsible for records management, community relations and outreach initiatives.

Before joining the National Archives, he served in several managerial and policy-related capacities within the public administration.

Recordings

All sessions of the workshop were recorded and will be presented here on our BLOG within the next weeks.
For now: Check out the recording of the introduction and the presentation of Leonard Callus about “Identification of potential for revenue generation” !

Additionally you can read the full report about the workshop HERE.

ICARUS Lecture: Digitized archival materials from different corners of Europe

On March 23^rd, Dorottya Szabó – Senior Archivist and head of department of Digital Services National Archives of Hungary and Anabela Borges Teles Ribeiro, Head of Departments of Digital Contents Conservation and Restoration, at Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, supported by Maria dos Remédios Amaral, gave the ICARUS Online Lecture #5 on the topic: Digitized archival materials from different corners of Europe: birth of transmedia exhibitions of the European Digital Treasures project.

The exhibitions aim at telling the stories and experiences hold inside European archives across multiple platforms and formats using various digital technologies, working together with cross-platform media and involving new publics.

Anabela Ribeiro and Dorottya Szabó described the process of “making the exhibition”: the choice of documents and scientific work of historians, the digitization, the designer’s work, the creation of merchandising products, videos and entertainment apps in the different environments of Hungarian and Portuguese archives.

They also addressed the topic of managing these activities during a pandemic, which greatly affected the event’s schedule and opening of the exhibitions. Thanks to the efforts of the archival staff’s this process was successful and the exhibitions are currently open. Exhibition catalogues and materials are available at this page & check the Exhibition timeline.

See the session here or on the ICARUS YouTube channel!

For general information about the EDT Project please click here.

Stay tuned for more ICARUS Online lectures!

Written by Stella Montanari, International Centre for Archival Research.

May 5, 2022May 5, 2022

Opening of the exhibition “Exiles, Migration Flows and Solidarity” at the National Archive of Torre do Tombo (Portugal)

The transmedia exhibition “Exiles, Migration Flows and Solidarity”, included in the European Digital Treasures Project, was opened in Lisbon (Portuguese National Archive – Torre do Tombo) on the 28^th of April.

Nowadays, when Europe is facing serious migration crises, the present exhibition, the outcome of the European cooperation, analyzes issues like exiles and migration flows from a historical perspective, through 47 key documents spanning several centuries, kept in European archives. These documents are divided into three main categories:

work-related migration, encompassing stories of individuals and groups of individuals, but also of the transfer of expertise, vital to the economic and cultural development;
war-related migration, covering various types of conflicts, from rebellions and civil wars through to the world wars of the 20th century;
human costs associated with political uprising, turmoil and persecution.

All these documents are also included in the exhibition catalogue – have a look!

As in previous exhibitions, this one combines different technological tools that allow the public to get to know our written past through multiple channels. Visitors can interact with original documents, digital reproductions, quiz and video games, augmented reality experiences to explore parallel worlds and videos presenting the project.

On display are also the merchandising products, inspired by the selected documents for the three Digital Treasures exhibitions.

The opening was chaired by Silvestre Lacerda, General Diretor from the Books, Archives and Libraries of Portugal, by Severiano Hernández, General Subdirector of the Spanish State Arquives, by María Oliván, Head of Unit of Transparency, Document Management & Access to Documents of the European Commission and by Ole Gausdal, International Director at The National Archives of Norway.

Opening Ceremony with Silvestre Lacerdo (DGLAB) and the Digital Treasures partners.

It also counted with the musical performance of the young entrants to the “Young Digital Treasures” contest.

Participants of the Young Digital Treasures contest framing the opening ceremony with their musical performance!

The exhibition can be visited until June 30^th 2022 in Portugal.

Written by the National Archives of Portugal

April 27, 2022April 27, 2022

Link-Lives – Building historical big data from archival records for use by researchers and the Danish public – by Barbara Revuelta-Eugercios

The third presentation on September 3^rd at the workshop in Alicante was held by Barbara Reuvelta-Eugercios. She is associate research professor with special responsibilities at the National Archives of Denmark and associate research professor at the SAXO Institute, University of Copenhagen. Her focus is on historical demography, mortality inequality and digital methods in history. After her doctoral studies in Spain, she has worked in research institutions in Sweden, France and Denmark in the fields of economic history, demography and history. She co-directs the Link-Lives project since 2019.

Abstract. The Link-Lives project is a cross-disciplinary research project. The aim is to take the difficult and time-consuming task of combining information from diverse archival sources relating to any given person, to build life-courses and family relations. The timespan for the project is from 1787 to the present. The results will be freely and easily available to everybody. The project will expand the scope of registry-based research from decades to centuries and open new avenues for intergenerational research in the health and social sciences. It will also ease the access to some of Denmark’s digital treasures to the average citizen. Link-Lives is a collaboration between the Danish National Archives, the Copenhagen City Archives and the University of Copenhagen. It is funded through two grants by the Innovation Fund Denmark, the Carlsberg Foundation and two small grants from the Ministry of Culture.

You can watch the whole session on YouTube here & read the manuscript paper here!

Written by Barbara Revuelta-Eugercios & the European Digital Treasures Team.

March 24, 2022March 24, 2022

Browsing through sealed historical documents: noninvasive imaging methods for document digitization – by Daniel Stromer

The European Digital Treasures team wants to disclose the various presentations held within the workshop “New digital exponential technologies towards the generation of business models” on 2^nd and 3^rd of September, 2021 at the Provincial Historical Archive of Alicante (Spain). For this reason, we are posting about each of the presentations.

One of the speakers was Daniel Stromer, who started to study medical engineering at Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) in 2010. In 2019, he finished his PhD (Dr.-Ing.) in Computer Science with the title “Non-invasive imaging for Digital Humanities, Medicine, and Quality Assessment“. Daniel is now heading the Learning Approaches for Medical Big Data (LAMBDA) group of the Pattern Recognition Lab (PRL) at FAU. In parallel, he joined Siemens Healthineers as collaboration manager for Digital Health. He is currently project lead of a multimodal document digitization project as well as interested in research where pure image data is being enriched and correlated with new data sources.

Abstract. Historical documents are witnesses of history that provide us with valuable information about former times. Many of these relics are too fragile to open them, such that innovative non-invasive imaging techniques can help to reveal hidden contents. In this work, we present our research on Computed Tomography, Phase-contrast and Terahertz imaging. We use image processing methods to visualize the digital data for the naked eye. Our use cases are mainly books, but also Asian bamboo scroll data is shown. As an outlook, our future research will focus on hybrid imaging approaches combined with intelligent image processing. Our research aim is to gain insights, and based on them, provide guidelines for specific documents. Therefore, the space of documents and modalities is presented. We try to utilize advantages and counter disadvantages of certain modalities. Finally, the future of this highly translational research is discussed and possible considerations for potential commercialization are presented.

You can watch the whole session on YouTube here & read the manuscript paper here!

Written by Daniel Stromer & the European Digital Treasures Team.

December 24, 2021December 7, 2021

The Holy Right Hand of Stephen I, King of Hungary

The Holy Right Hand is a Hungarian national and Catholic relic, which is believed to be the naturally mummified right hand of Stephen I, first king of Hungary, referred also as St. Stephen.

St. Stephen (in Hungarian Szent István) was born around 970-975 in Esztergom. He was a member of the Árpád dynasty, born a pagan but was baptized as a Christian. In 996, he married Gisela of Bavaria, sister of the future Holy Roman emperor, Henry II. After the death of his father, Grand Prince Géza, Stephen combated an insurrection led by his cousin, Koppány, who claimed the throne in accordance with Árpád succession rules. After defeating Koppány, Stephen was crowned as (the first) king of Hungary with a crown received from Pope Sylvester II.

His coronation took place around 1021 years ago, on Christmas Day in 1000 and it signified Hungary’s entry into the family of European Christian nations. Stephen treated the church as the principal pillar of his authority, dispatching missionaries throughout his realm, founding bishoprics and abbeys and making the building of churches mandatory. He died in 1038 and became Hungary’s patron saint.

The king’s naturally mummified right hand is one of the most significant Hungarian national relics, found when his stone grave was opened on August 20^th, 1083, in Székesfehérvár. (The identification mark of the right hand was the king’s ring, which adorned the hand.) The relic saw a few adventures in its time. During the Turkish occupation, it ended up in Ragusa (today: Dubrovnik, Croatia), where it was guarded by Dominican friars, attracting a growing number of pilgrims to the city.

Queen Maria Theresa (1717–1780), late successor of St. Stephen on the Hungarian throne, negotiated the return of the Holy Right Hand in 1771, offering to the historical city of Ragusa her protection against the threat of Russian invasion in return. In her charter decree, she set out how the relic, St. Stephen’s mummified hand is to be respected throughout the country.

During World War II, the Holy Right Hand was concealed – similarly to the coronation jewels – near Salzburg, in Austria. The relic arrived back to Hungary in 1945, and it has been on display in Saint Stephen’s Basilica in Budapest since 1987.

The charter issued by Queen Maria Theresa on 7^th August, 1772 in Vienna is a parchment volume, sealed with the greater Hungarian secret seal and consists of 10 pages. It is kept by the National Archives of Hungary, in Budapest (under the reference code HU-MNL-OL – C 90 – № 11).

The record is showcased in the first thematic exhibition of the European Digital Treasures project, entitled Construction of Europe – History, Memory and Myth of Europeanness over 1000 years.

Written by Dorottya Szabó
Senior Archivist, National Archives of Hungary

November 26, 2021November 26, 2021

Opening of the exhibition “Exiles, Migration Flows and Solidarity” at the Documentary Centre for the Historical Memory (Spain)

Yesterday, 25^th of November, the second of the three transmedia exhibitions included in the European Digital Treasures project, “Exiles, Migration Flows and Solidarity”, was successfully opened at the Documentary Centre of the Historical Memory (Spain).

Manuel Melgar Camarzana. Director of the Historical Memory Documentary Centre.

Severiano Hernández Vicente. Deputy Director-General of the State Archives.

This exhibition analyzes how migrations and exchanges have contributed particularly to building cultural diversity in Europe through the documentary treasures kept in European archives. And it is the outcome of the European cooperation, a clear example of the combination of the capacities, heritage, diversity, value, and inspiration of all those who have made this project possible.

The narratives displayed here combine different technological tools that allow us to get to know our written past through multiple channels. Visitors can interact with: 9 original documents from 4 different archives, 21 facsimiles from 7 countries, 18 digital reproductions of documents from 6 countries, displayed in interactive booths, 1 quiz game for people who love challenges, 1 memory matching game to encourage observation, 1 infinite running game to reward speed by catching archival documents, 1 interactive RPG game to learn how to work on an archive, 4 augmented reality experiences to explore parallel worlds and videos presenting the project and its merchandising products!

Through the selection of 44 documents from the archives that participate in the project, European migrations are narrated from a historical perspective. In a Europe that is currently facing one of its most important migration crises, the relevance of this exhibition is key. The narrative has been structured through three thematic pillars: Work-related Migration; War- related Migration; Political Uprising, Turmoil and Persecution.

The stories combine different tools and technological solutions, with which the public will be able to access the written past through multiple channels that will allow them to experiment, play, learn and share, with that unique ability that documents have to tell personal stories (letters, images, boarding passes, visas, certificates, etc.) behind the European migration figures.

The opening was chaired by Severiano Hernández Vicente, Head of the Spanish State Archives, by María Oliván, Head of the Transparency, Document Management & Access to Documents Unit of the European Commissio, by Manuel Melgar, Director of the Documentary Centre of the Historical Memory, and by María Encarnación Pérez Álvarez, Government Sub-delegate in Salamanca. It was also attended by representatives of the University of Salamanca, of different archives of the province of Salamanca, by the members of the ‘European Digital Treasures’ project and a representation of the Spanish State Archives.

The exhibition can be visited until March 13^th, 2022 in Spain, with capacity restrictions and hygiene and safety measures established by health authorities to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Practical information: https://www.culturaydeporte.gob.es/cultura/areas/archivos/mc/archivos/cdmh/portada.html

Written by Spanish State Archives.

November 18, 2021November 22, 2021

Opening of the exhibition “Exiles, migratory flows and solidarity” at the Archives House (Norway)

After more than two years of work in the preparation of the three transmedia exhibitions included in the European Digital Treasures project, on 12^th of November, the exhibition Exiles, migratory flows, and solidarity was successfully opened at the Archives House (Norway).

This exhibition is the outcome of the European cooperation, a clear example of the combination of the capacities, heritage, diversity, value, and inspiration of all those who have made this project possible.

The narratives displayed here combine different technological tools that allow us to get to know our written past through multiple channels. Visitors can interact with digital reproductions of documents from nine European countries, a quiz game for people who love challenges, a memory matching game to encourage observation, an infinite running game to reward speed by catching archival documents, an interactive RPG game to learn how to work on an archive, three augmented reality experiences to explore parallel worlds and two videos presenting the project! On display are also merchandising products created by professional designers, inspired by the documents presented in the Digital Treasures exhibitions.

The opening ceremony was led by the National Archivist of Norway, Inga Bolstad. Afterwards, Ole Gausdal, who has been responsible for curating the exhibition, did a guided tour for the guests.

The opening was attended by the General director of the Book, Archives and Libraries of Portugal, Silvestre Lacerda and the Deputy Director of the Spanish State Archives, Severiano Hernández and members of the ‘European Digital Treasures’ project from the National Archives of Hungary, Malta, Spain, Portugal and from ICARUS. From Norway there were many invited guests from the National Archives of Norway and local and regional heritage institutions.

The exhibition can be visited until January 30^th, 2022, in Norway. The same exhibition will open in Salamanca, Spain on 25^th November 2021. Later, in 2022, it will open in Hungary, Portugal, Malta, and Austria.

Written by the National Archives of Norway

Some members of the team of the European Digital Treasures project.

November 4, 2021November 3, 2021

Burial is one of the earliest human activities!

Besides being an attempt to bring closure to the deceased’s family and friends and a manifestation of the desire to respect the dead, human burial practices are marked by the religious views of both society and the individual.

With the resurrection of Christ and a belief in the resurrection of the body at its core, Christianity has always ensured that the bodies of the faithful were treated with respect and buried them in a safe place. Christians had less need than their neighbours to appease their dead, who were themselves less likely to return as unhappy ghosts.

Sepulchral cell – National Archives of Malta.

In the second half of the first millennium, graves began to cluster in and around churches. This process shaped the landscape of Western Christendom, with the living and the dead forming a single community, sharing a common space. These developments unified western Europe more around shared rituals than common political structures.

The document shown here is the plan of a sepulchral chapel submitted by Emanuele Luigi Galizia in 1872, to be located at the Maria Addolorata Cemetery in Malta.

It shines a light on the evolution of burial customs in Christianity, in this instance the introduction of extra-mural cemeteries in mid-19th century Malta.

Unless death was due to a plague or contagious disease, the strong preference of the Maltese was for intramural burial in churches and chapels around their local area. The introduction of extra-mural cemeteries in mid-19^th century Malta created a great deal of controversy. The local church was vehemently opposed to both the principle of establishing burial grounds outside the confines of local parishes and the principle of multi-faith interment.

The impetus for change came from a scathing sanitary report on the health risk of continued burials in overcrowded harbour churches, along with the fact that the Protestant burial grounds had reached capacity. The issue was resolved in Malta with the promulgation of the Burial Ordinance in May 1869 prohibiting the burial of corpses within the five harbour cities (Valletta, Floriana, Vittoriosa, Senglea and Cospicua), the most densely-populated areas of Malta. Addolorata Cemetery was opened around that date, growing over time to become Malta’s largest burial ground.

At first, the population refused to use Addolorata Cemetery. In fact, it would take three years before anyone was buried in this cemetery, that eventually became Malta’s largest.

Written by Leonard Callus,
National Archives of Malta