arthistoricum.net

Originals are the most important asset in information transmission. Our society is deeply rooted in history, old documents and visual content (manuscripts, old books, old documents, papers and maps, pictures, cultural heritage artifacts, etc.) are emotional testimonies of this heritage, and stimulate people’s feelings and memories. Often, these however remain hidden to the large public: they are either kept in old storage areas that put them in conservation peril, or digitized but hardly accessible due to complex cataloguing systems, sometimes “boring” research interfaces. In addition, many items are described in proprietary systems or file formats. The consequence of this is that today users have to spend a lot of time to understand inconsistent workflow of proprietary retrieval databases or unattractive search-engine interfaces. Thus, there are billions of ancient and modern fragile documents and material preserved in memory institutions worldwide, that offer unique cultural and historical content.