Official statement
The Venice Time Machine started in 2013 as a partnership between EPFL, Ca’Foscari and the State Archives of Venice on the basis of the creation of free, open access based on images and data on Venice Heritage. Philanthropic funds were received to organise a digitisation pipeline which was installed in the State Archive, operated by EPFL employees in close interaction with archivists of the State Archive. A press release in 2017 by the three institutions involved announced the first results of the projects including the free access to hundreds of thousands of digitised documents and search engines prototypes using handwritten text and image recognition methods. All the digitised documents were handed over to the Archive for long-term conservation.
A week ago, the collaboration between the two institutions was temporally suspended. The two institutions are currently trying to resolve the problem as fast as possible.
It needs to be emphasized, that this an issue, that solely concerns the partners locally involved and does not in any way affect the pan-European Time Machine project.
Time Machine ambitions to work collaboratively with archives throughout the world as partners in this whole endeavour, helping them using the international licences that guarantee and support the free use and circulation of their digitised sources. The work Europeana has done on this matter, notably with the establishment of international recognised right statements (http://rightstatements.org) attached to each digitised image, is an initial starting point for helping patrimonial institutions share their resources in international contexts.
More information:
EN 24 (23/09/2019)
TV Svizzera (25/09/2019)
Press release, Venice State Archives (19/09/2019)
Contact:
Time Machine Organisation – Communication Team
A-1030 Vienna, Erdberger Lände
contact@timemachine.eu