VENIVA: Veniva - venetian virtual archives

Contract Information

Programme:	FOURTH FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME
Programme Acronym:	ESPRIT 4
Contract Type:	COST-SHARING CONTRACTS
Start Date:	1995-11-01
End Date:	1998-02-28
Contract No:	20638
Role for TUC/MUSIC:	Contractor
Funding for TUC/MUSIC:	70000.0 Euros
Principal Investigator for TUC/MUSIC:	Stavros Christodoulakis

Project Information

Project Description

VENIVA (VENetIan Virtual Archive) is a research and development project funded by the EEC (ESPRIT Project N° 20638). The aim of the VENIVA project is to set up a pilot application of a virtual archive with a hypertextual interface. The core idea of the VENIVA pilot application is remote access of documents (paper documents, hand-written and printed books, drawings, maps) preserved in Venice, Corfu, Crete and Vienna. More precisely, virtual access will provided to:

• documents and images belonging to Notaries of Candia and Duke of Candia archives (1240-1706). These are held in the Record Office of Venice (the world's biggest and most prestigious archive, containing 90 kilometers of shelves of records which are the ancient archives of the Serenissima, the documents belonging to the central and peripheral offices and the notary records)
• historical documents of the National Archives of Greece
• iconographic collections of sketches, drawings and maps of Crete preserved by the Marciana Library of Venice, such as the journal of the War of Candia (1637-1669)
• documents from the Record Office of Vienna.
• documents (e.g. manuscripts) from the Library of Chania

The major technical objective of the project is to integrate different technologies into a single system. These include such technologies as geographically distributed databases, MINERS hypermedia interfaces, full-text retrieval systems, World Wide Web and Internet Publishing. The system that will be formed will be capable of providing access to the virtual archive contents locally or via Internet. A set of value-added services (e.g. Internet publications, 3D reconstructions of Venetian monuments, guided tours etc.) will also be offered. In order to provide services both locally and on the information providers' (libraries' and archives') premises, the tools that will be developed in the context of the project will be used. More precisely, the major project objectives are:

• Realization of a distributed virtual archive consisted of a number of sub-archives (each sub-archive will represent an Information Provider, which will be in the context of VENIVA a library or an archive)
• Implementation of tools that will permit:
  • The provision of reading room services locally for each sub-archive. These services will be provided by Internal Service Providers (who will develop and maintain the applications installed on the Information Provider premises), and will include: creation and maintenance of the database for the archive or the library, provision of indexing mechanisms and navigation mechanisms for the contents of the database and provision of the capability to naive users of accessing from home the archive or library database contents.
  • The provision of a set of value added services (Internet and CD-ROM publications) on the virtual archive contents. These services will be provided by External Service Providers (publishers, Internet Service Providers etc.) and will include: the uniform presentation of the information that can be accessed from the External Service Provider (e.g. contents of several different archives), indexing mechanisms and navigation mechanisms for viewing uniformly the contents of several archives, personalization support for allowing a browsing interface to large sets of data, support for maintaining an up-to-date view of the contents of the different archive databases and support for added-value services which interconnect other publisher products (e.g. electronic books, virtual reality presentations etc.) with the contents of the archives.

In the context of VENIVA, MUSIC will transfer technology to Multimedia Systems Center in order to:

• use the KYDONIA multimedia server as an alternative platform for supporting an External Service Provider
• produce 3-D reconstructions of the Venetian monuments of Crete

Project Publications

(1) Implementing Powerful Retrieval Capabilities in a Distributed Environment for Libraries and Archives

Publication Authors: Tsinaraki C., Anestis G., Moumoutzis N., Christodoulakis S.
Publication Info: Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries, 2nd European Conference on Digital Libraries,ECDL, Heraclion, Crete, Greece, pp.653-654, Sep. 1998
Publication Type: Conference Publications

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Project Consortium

	Marsilio Editori Marsilio Editori S.p.A.	ΙΤ
	N/A INTRACOM S.A.	EL
	LRF Lambrakis Research Foundation	EL
	N/A Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana	ΙΤ
	N/A Archives Generales De L'Etat - Ministere de l' Education Nationale et des Cultes-Republique Hellenique	EL
	Österreichisches Staatsarchiv Österreichisches Staatsarchiv	AU
	TU Wien Vienna University of Technology	AU
	EDS Electronic Data Systems Italia SpA	ΙΤ
	MSC Multimedia Systems Center S.A	EL
	N/A Ufficio Centrale per i Beni Archivisti - Repubblica Italiana	ΙΤ