Changing the Way We Learn About the Past

We are delighted to announce that on June 18, 2010, The Medici Archive Project received a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to develop a new and state-of-the-art online platform that will revolutionize the way archives have been studied to the present. This grant follows an earlier six-month planning grant from the Mellon Foundation to study the feasibility of such platform.

The new online platform will contain digitized copies of the Archive’s papers, their respective transcriptions and synopses, as well as an interactive facility through which anyone interested can communicate with others and discuss these documents.

More than a decade ago, with the creation of its first database, the Medici Archive Project was a pioneer in the employment of digital technologies for the study of historical archives. Today, we are happy to report, this project keeps us on the cutting edge in the exploitation of the best resources that the fast moving world of the Internet has to offer to continue in our mission.

Once our platform becomes a reality, increasingly larger sections of the Archive will be available to all, just at one click away. Because of the advantages of digital photography, in some cases handwritten documents are easier to read in electronic format. Moreover, the originals will no longer be subjected to the wear and tear of manual consultation. They will be better preserved for future generations, and the high costs of conservation and restoration will drop dramatically. Once the platform is completed its software will be totally available for free to all archives that want to use it. We expect that others will take advantage of the opportunity and of its resources for the free and open dissemination of knowledge.

 We are grateful to the Mellon Foundation for selecting the Medici Archive Project to develop this tool for archival study. Special thanks go to Donald J. Waters, Program Officer, and to Helen Cullyer, Associate Program Officer, of the Scholarly Communications and Information Technology Program at the Mellon Foundation for their patience and help.

We also thank the General Director of Archives of the Italian Ministry of Culture, Dr. Luciano Scala, and to the Director of the Florence State Archive where the Mediceo del Principato archival corpus is preserved, Dr. Carla Zarilli. Both were extremely supportive and forthcoming in granting us all the necessary permissions to digitize and publish the documents online. They also gave us precious advice and invaluable suggestions on the best and most efficient way to conduct the digitization process.

Finally, we are all grateful to the members of our Board of Trustees who encouraged us to proceed in this project. Without them and their support the Medici Archive Project could not exist.