The ARCHiVe Centre is dedicated to the digital acquisition of the cultural heritage on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore and of materials preserved in institutions in the city of Venice and worldwide (archives, book collections, art works and architectural heritage). It also deals with the analysis and preservation of the files obtained and, lastly, the dissemination of the results to the respective user communities.

These results are possible thanks to continuous research, conducted in the fields of both information technology and humanities studies. The creation and use of software and hardware tools is designed for and subordinate to the scholarly objectives associated with the individual projects or the items being researched: the real mission is to find innovative ways of protecting and using the sources, while respecting criteria of feasibility and sustainability and guaranteeing high quality and security.

Hand in hand with research, ARCHiVe offers its collaborators the opportunity of learning by doing with the aim of furthering knowledge about methods and the potential of the digital revolution for the benefit of young researchers. This process is possible thanks to the coordination between ARCHiVe’s partners (the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Factum Foundation and EPFL) and other national and international institutions that collaborate with ARCHiVe on joint projects.

In the ARCHiVe laboratories at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini it is possible to digitise and post-produce paper and photographic documents, maps and drawings, works of art of various kinds, three-dimensional items, sound documents and analogue or digital audiovisual documents. The laboratories themselves are the result of experimentation and adaptation to the needs of the material to be digitised and the requirements for particular collaborations.

Given the Foundation’s specific needs for cataloguing and describing archives, the ARCHiVe Centre always works jointly with the Cini Institutes and Centres to guarantee the necessary support in the planning, defining and structuring of digital archives.