ICARUS (consortium)
ICARUS (International Center for Archival Research) is an international consortium to support archival research and the digitization of archives. It was founded in 2008.
ICARUS has the legal form of a non-profit association to which around 180 archives and research institutes from 37 countries belong (34 in Europe, as well as the USA, Canada and Iraq). He is also part of an alliance of 250 institutions from 32 countries that are working together to establish the EU flagship project Time Machine .
The current president is Thomas Aigner from the diocesan archive of St. Pölten , Lower Austria.
Self-description
The ICARUS consortium supports archives and related institutions in their endeavors to face the challenges of the digital age. Together, under the premise of complementarity, the tasks that the digital age brings with it can be mastered [...] It is not only important to set up and maintain digital infrastructures, but also to develop common standards and strategies.
ICARUS pursues the following special goals:
- Exchange subject-specific expertise and knowledge
- to develop additional funding strategies
- as well as generating and promoting digital content.
Previous projects, internet portals
So far, 16 EU projects have been carried out in Europe alone and 13 million euros have been raised as research funding . This enabled 640,000 documents and 26 million pages from church registers to be digitized.
They are generally accessible in several portals, especially in matricula-online and in monasterium.net .
Web links
- International Center for Archival Research
- Martin Kugler: The digitization of archives . Die Presse November 4, 2018, p.24