More than half a million pages of local newspapers have also been digitized into the open-access database. So far, 330,000 queries from 70 countries have been registered.
Cyprus and the Aegean region share origin and history. These islands have rescued more than 10,000 files of great historical value and have created an open access digital platform thanks to the European project Digital Herodotus II.
The files are kept at Cypriot public television, which has provided hundreds of hours of audiovisual, audio and music documents on various topics from the 50s to the 90s. It has been an “archaeological” work, explains Thanasis Tsokos, general director of the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation (CyBC) and responsible for the file.
“The uniqueness of our archive is due to the fact that we were the only radio and television station from 1957 to 1992. That is why we tried to digitize it, because it is very important for our society. It is a part of the european history.”
“First you have to fix it, digitize it, and then recognize who is who in the photos, in the documentaries, on the radio, so it is a complicated procedure.”
27 people have worked in the selection, restoration, documentation and conservation of this material. The Digital Herodotus platform hosts only the 20% of the total archive of Cypriot television.
“Choosing the material was not an easy task. We had to choose only 400 hours of material, out of a total of two thousand five hundred hours,” says Fivia Savva, director of the Herodotus II project.
The total investment of this project (2017 – 2020) amounted to approximately 1 million euros, of which 85% was financed by the EU and 15% by the governments of Greece and Cyprus. More than half a million pages from local newspapers have also been dumped into this open access database. Until now 330,000 people from 70 countries have visited this archive. The history of Cyprus and the Aegean region in one click.
It is also accessible to the most vulnerable: students from the Nicosia School for the Deaf worked on a documentary. During the Turkish invasion in 1974, the school served as a refugee camp. This project helps them stay in touch with their own History.
