Abstract:

The proposed paper, using the method of virtual presentation, focuses on the theoretical framework and methodology of the digitization of the historical archival collection of the Centre for the Study and Research of the History of Education and the Teaching Profession (KE.M.E.I.E.D.E.) of the University of Crete.

This digitization project is co-funded by National and European funds in order to create, promote and exploit the digital archival heritage in the field of educational history and culture. Through the digitization an innovative model for the operation of the digitized material metadata is going to be developed.

Our ultimate goal is the enhancing of the web academic research (e-researching), as well as the alternative perception of the historical, educational and cultural heritage by a wider target group of digital visitors.

The content of the material to be digitized consists of historical documents and heirloom objects that come from the Cretan Didaskaleion, the first official public institution of higher education in Crete (1901-1934).

These kind of digital documents are used to exploit and approach the historical research from different perspectives in the humanities (as a group of paideia's disciplines, cf. The British Academy for Humanities & Social Sciences), ensuring the availability of the interoperability of historical resources in cutting edge and performative critical learning fields.

In this context, the present paper includes:
(a) the theoretical characteristics of the digitization, the e-Research methodology and the interoperability in educational history,
(b) the documentation necessity of the digitization feasibility of this archival historical collection and a detailed description of its content,
(c) the digitization process,
(d) the metadata writing methodology and the digitization (2D) process, which will be used both for the upgrading and the expansion of the project's metadata interoperability services with other external metadata repositories (such as SearchCulture.gr).

Given those, the above archival collection (included in the new concept of ‘studia humanitatis’) which is going to be digitized constitutes a contemporary advantageous expansion of digital humanistic repositories and applies the new electronic research in the sciences of humanistic paideia to support and promote new forms in the historical educational research, while raising awareness and revivification of education cultural heritage in a current operating way.

Keywords:

Digitization, digital repositories, archival collection, e-researching, interoperability.