Hungarian history preserved

It is the Hungarian News Agency's (MTI) over 13 million negatives that have been digitalised from the agency´s unmatched archives outside the Godor Club in central Budapest.

 In January 2012, a delegation from the Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage visited the news agency and got a glimpse into the impressing work done to preserve the massive photo material from the 20th century in Hungary.

 

The archives consist of a vast number of historical photos from the 20th century and the digitalisation project provided an opportunity to bring these historical events to life once again. With over 400,000 EUR in support from Norway, a huge digitalisation project was implemented with the aim of preserving this important Hungarian cultural heritage for the future.

Scholars, historians and experts assisted in the time consuming process of selecting which photos to digitalise in categories such as architecture, everyday life, art, sports and politics. Now, the searchable archive does not only include some 40,000 photographs but also crucial background information in both Hungarian and English attached to each photograph. The digitalised photographs and information preserve and provide important and valuable knowledge accessible for researchers and future generations in Hungary and the whole of Europe.

 A Norway Grants photo exhibition from MTI's archives, displaying photos of people engaged in leisure activities in the past few decades, opened in Budapest in April 2011 to mark the finalisation of the project. Nearly 60 photographs were exhibited from the MTI´s collection of photos. Another 600 digital images were shown in a slideshow on plazma screens.

 

Conservation of European cultural heritage received a quarter of the funding in the last Grants period. In the period 2009 – 2014 11, 2 million EUR will be allocated to the conservation and revitalisation of cultural and natural heritage aiming to safeguard and make publicly accessible the rich heritage of Hungary.