ArCEs - A digital archive of Italian Colonial Cartography and Scientific Expeditions

Abstract

ArcCEs is a study for developing a digital archive about Italian scientific expeditions in Northern and Eastern Africa and the former Italian colonies (19th-20th century). The aim of the project is to assess, protect and enhance an important corpus of documents (historical cartographies, photographs, scientific papers and archive documents) distributed in public archives and private collections. The database structure is based on Dublin Core metadata standard. The information system is designed to integrate and make interoperable digital resources, to ensure standardized and complex indexing, to support advanced retrieval, according to the standards in use. The geolocation of the resources in a GIS environment can display query results in Google Earth environment.