Venice Time Machine update on digitisation and design of Information System for EPFL. March 2015.

1. On-going digitisation at the Archivio
di Stato: figures and logistics
Giovanni Colavizza, Fabio Bortoluzzi EPFL

2. 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

3. Digitisation speeds: the upper bound
0
0.65
1.3
1.95
2.6
Unbounded documents Normal registers Oversized registers
Avg. pages per minute

4. Archival description: the bottleneck
!
Basic description: on “container”
Detailed description: on contents, allows for
indexing and search

5. Indexes of an Information System

6. 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)

7. Way forward 2: indexes
How Venetians indexed this information?

8. Way forward 2: indexes
How Venetians sorted this information?
Real estate surveys
Fiscal declarations
Testaments

9. Logic
Entities
Indexes
Documents

10. 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

11. On-going digitisation at the Archivio di Stato:
figures and logistics
Thank you
Giovanni Colavizza, Fabio Bortoluzzi EPFL