Press Releases

The Press and Information Office(PIO) organized a conference titled “Digitization, accessibility and dissemination of audiovisual, printed and musical content”, on 28 January 2020. The conference has been conducted in the framework of the Interreg Greece - Cyprus Cross-border Operational Program, Digital Herodotus ΙΙ.

The aim of the Conference, which took place at “Filoxenia” Conference Centre in Lefkosia, was to stress the importance and necessity of the digitization of archived material, so that this material may be protected against the risk of damage, deterioration or destruction.

In his address at the opening of the conference, the Minister of Interior, Mr Nicos Nouris, mentioned, inter alia, that “through the digitization of primary material of unique value, be it audiovisual, print, or musical, the history and culture of our country is outlined, from colonialism to the present day.”

Furthermore, the Minister of Interior underlined the fact that the cooperation between the two leading mass media organizations in our country, the CyBC and the PIO, does not stop here, but rather it extends to other co-funded projects, congratulating the leadership of the two organizations for these initiatives, which, he mentioned, utilize European funds and programs for the national good.

The Director of the PIO, Ms Sophie Michaelides, in her own address mentioned that the Press and Information Office constitutes the organization that has been gathering press archives since its establishment. Moreover, she stressed that “the PIO’s Newspaper Archive has the most comprehensive collection of newspapers published in Cyprus”. Stressing the importance of the collection, she added: “In numbers, this means many millions of pages of newspapers, some of them dating back to 1878. 142 years of history are kept in a specially designed area, providing a valuable source and testimony of the history, politics and social and economic life of the country”.

During the Conference, Ms Michaelides also took the opportunity to announce that the PIO’s digital archive was soon to open its doors to the general public even further, explaining that soon some of this material would be available from the personal computer of any interested party. "Our goal is for it to be available online by the end of March on the website piopressarchive.cy, thus making the Cyprus Press Archive a part of the global digital society," she noted.

The Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation, Mr Andreas Frangos, inter alia, said that “with the excellent cooperation of the CyBC’s partners, the Press and Information Office and the Development Agency of South Aegean Region, Energean A.E., it has been made possible for the father of History, Herodotus, to be 'brought back to life' through the documentation and digitization of part of our rich archival material”.

In his brief speech, the President of the Development Agency of South Aegean Region, Energean A.E., Mr Christos Mpardos, noted that “with the completion of the project, we have at our disposal a unique, memorable digitized archive and, at the same time, a valuable tool for researchers to exploit, which is readily available and accessible to all citizens, and, most importantly, it is free of charge, as well”.

The Conference concluded with the presentation of the project results by the Head of CyBC’s Archive, Digital Herodotus II Project Manager, Ms. Fivia Savva, as well as presentations including good practices and innovative digitization methods, used in the project.

(ND/EH)