The Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, today announced the start of a three-year project called “Distributed Archiving at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory (IFDT),” funded by the Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web (https://ffdweb.org/). As part of this project, IFDT is opening a digitization center that aims to collect, digitize, preserve, interpret and distribute archival materials and other materials related to cultural heritage that have been treated as “undesirable” or “unworthy” of support by various political and cultural authorities.
The project will build the organizational and technical infrastructure IFDT and work with the Filecoin ecosystem to demonstrate the importance of libraries and archives that are accessible to everyone, including the opportunity for further promotion and preservation of cultural heritage.
“FFDW’s mission is to preserve humanity’s most important information,” said Marta Belcher, president and chair of Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web. “We are delighted to support the work of the IFDT to ensure the rich history of this region persists into the future using the decentralized web.”
In the first three years of its implementation, researchers and collaborators will work to digitize existing and neglected cultural artifacts, texts, sounds and moving images within three separate themes:
- Texts and materials from the archive of engaged thought that belong to scientists and politicians who have had a lasting impact on the history of Southeast Europe.
- Holocaust material belonging to the Staro Sajmište, Bor and Niš concentration camps, and
- TheDecentralized Library of Suppressed Heritage will also be created, which will enable users to re-explore the library on Kosančićev venac, destroyed in 1941, through an AR/VR application.
This project places special focus on the importance of cooperation with national, regional and international institutions, galleries, libraries, archives, and museums. The goal of this project is to provide support in efforts to digitize and preserve fragments of cultural heritage in the areas where cooperating institutions operate. The center will be available not only to researchers and collaborators of the IFDT, but also to external collaborators, researchers and scientists from Serbia and the region.
“The project is of exceptional importance for the social sciences and humanities because of the effort to make the invisible intellectual heritage of our region accessible and public. Through the search for documents, personal testimonies, unwanted authors and missing institutions, we learn and enrich our knowledge and follow the institute’s mission as a place of engaged thought.” said director of IFDT Gazela Pudar Draško.
All the information about the project “Distributed Archiving at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory” are available at: https://ifdt.bg.ac.rs/index.php/2023/03/03/distributed-archiving-at-the-institute-for-philosophy-and-social-theory-ifdt/?lang=en More information about the Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web can be found on their website: https://ffdweb.org/
