On-going digitisation at the Archivio di Stato: figures and logistics

Giovanni Colavizza, Fabio Bortoluzzi EPFL

Goals of first phase (started June 2014)

Test digitisation and archival description speeds

Find a way to prioritise digitisation to build the Information System in parallel

Digitisation speeds: the upper bound

0

0.65

1.3

1.95

2.6

Unbounded documents Normal registers Oversized registers

Avg. pages per minute

Archival description: the bottleneck

!

Basic description: on “container” Detailed description: on contents, allows for indexing and search

Indexes of an Information System

Way forward 1: golden set

Not all documents are the same in connecting to each other.

Fiscal declarations (for taxation)

Personal acts (contracts, testaments, etc.)

State machinery (office holding)

Way forward 2: indexes

How Venetians indexed this information?

Way forward 2: indexes

How Venetians sorted this information?

Real estate surveysFiscal declarations

Testaments

Logic

Entities

Indexes

Documents

Updated scenario

Redecime Indexes

Redecime

Testaments Indexes

Testaments

0 300000 600000 900000 1200000

Est. pages done Est. pages to do

Redecime Indexes

Redecime

Testament Indexes

Testaments

0 450 900 1350 1800

days of work

On-going digitisation at the Archivio di Stato: figures and logistics

Thank you

Giovanni Colavizza, Fabio Bortoluzzi EPFL