The innovative online tool ‘Archive Alert’ (www.archivealert.gr), is competing along with tens of digital projects from all over the world in the ‘Best Use of Digital Humanities for Public Engagement ‘ category of the international ‘Digital Humanities Awards 2017’. The platform was created in 2017 and is a unique international digital tool to save historical files in co-operation with the general public. In its one year of existence, there have been 12 notifications of archival material, more than 12,000 visits to the platform, registration of 83 active users and the participation in the project of 15 archival institutions. The public can support the Greek nomination by voting on the relevant competition site.
The ‘Digital Humanities Awards’ are a set of annual awards where the public is able to nominate resources for the recognition of talent and expertise in the digital humanities community. The awards are overseen by an international scientific committee, which approves the nominations and is made up of 6 academics from recognised educational and research institutions for digital humanities. Voting is carried out solely by the public and candidates are from many different countries.
The innovative Archive Alert is an online platform whereby individuals, organisations and societies can identify files and other cultural material which are perceived as or considered to be in danger, due to ignorance, neglect or a shortage of skilled personnel. Registered users can announce the availability of their own historical documents, whether simply to update the archive bodies or invite expert staff to record, categorise, preserve and study it.
The platform enables the recording and subsequently, depending on the type of recording, automatically update all organisations affected by this. Use of the platform is free for both individual informants and archive bodies, However, any form of selling or buying of archives is forbidden. Archive Alert was created by historians Panayiotis Andranopoulos, Stefanos Vamiedakis. Giorgos Gasias, Yiannis Gonatidis and Christos Chrisanthopouolos, all members of Arxeion Taxis. The platform was funded by the Jon S. Latsis Public Benefit Foundation as part of the Programmes Supporting Scientific Societies 2016.
The non-profit organisation ‘Arxeion Taxis’ was founded in 2011 and is a collective project to actively preserve, showcase and use cultural heritage, focusing on historical documents and particularly historical records. In order to implement the above, it works with public bodies, similar scientific and private initiatives, as well as a wider network of concerned citizens.