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Venice towards Digital Preservation of Documents Digital preservation of documents is not something new. The last few years saw a large number of digitization projects across counties, cities, court houses, libraries, and universities. Venice, which is regarded as one of the prettiest cities in the world is also all set to digitize its archive collections. A recent report says that the Venice Time Machine wants to digitize the city’s vast archive collections and create a 1,000-year evolving model of it. The Project is run by the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in collaboration with the University Ca’Foscari of Venice, and with support from the Lombard Odier Foundation. The archives of Venice contains over 1,000 years of administrative documents, covering around 80 km of shelving. Valuable archives are scanned and preserved in electronic form for long term storage and easy access. Many of the documents of Venice are old, fragile and handwritten, and are dated many years back. The documents contain important details such as birth and death registries, tax statements, maps, peace treaties and more. Preserving these documents is necessary and advantageous in a number of ways.
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Advantages of Preserving Archives • Allows compact storage helping to save physical storage space • Enhances access to information • Digitized data can be easily updated and modified • Large databases can be created and easily maintained • Improved security Notable documents to preserve include correspondence from Venetian ambassadors abroad, a handwritten request from Galileo requesting financial support from the Venetian senate for a telescope, Napoleon’s treaty that put an end to the Venetian Republic, documents of the 9 th century and many more. Objective of Venice Time Machine The project actually aims to create an online repository through which individuals can search and browse. In this way, historians and researchers can view records as they wish without visiting Venice and its State Archive. Mass digitization to create the online archive can be enabled with automated text recognition. Based on the size and condition of the document, they are scanned into digital format, using a variety of scanning machines. Process of Digitization in Venice The digitization process in Venice will take place through a series of processes.
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• Scanned documents will be transcribed accurately. It is a challenging process, due to the complexity and variety of documents, scripts and languages involved. • Image content will be translated into words with the help of special algorithms. • Words will then be compared against each other to ensure accuracy. • Digitized documents will be indexed taxonomically. • A searchable archive will be created by interconnecting documents, people, and words. Digitization will help the residents of Venice discover more about their own past. Its greatest promise lies in the ease of access it allows users and the capability of disseminating valuable information to those who are looking for it.