The Herodotus project aims to preserve and highlight historical archives from Cyprus and the North Aegean. It includes audiovisual, music and collections of local newspaper archives.
The Herodotus platform is a crucial pathway to the history of Cyprus and the northern Aegean region. Archival digitisation of the Digital Herodotus II project entails in-depth documentation, which makes the material accessible for researchers, academics and educators.
Anna Tsiarta works at the Cyprus Pedagogical Institute, which ensures the continuous training of teachers and is concerned with the writing and publishing of textbooks and the production of teaching materials, including audiovisual works. After using the Digital Herodotus platform and the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation’s archive she says it is a vital asset: "It's very important to preserve the archives and not neglect them or let them disappear in dust," she says.
"The platform is benefiting the whole of society, because it's a great pathway to our past in order to foresee the future. We have direct access to audiovisual works, to photographs, to newspapers of the past, and we can relate to the context of the previous era and also the experiences of our ancestors, our grandfathers, our mothers and fathers.
"It's very important because this material can be used not only in films, but also in the textbooks the institute creates for the educational community. In the past, it had been difficult to use the archive. But since the digital Herodotus platform has been available to the public, it has been much easier to have the access and choose and then ask for permission to use that material in works for schools," Anna Tsiarta adds.