International distinctions for the digital applications of the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation

The Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation won first prize in the 2022 International Digital Humanities Awards Competition for its digital applications. The digital map TravellersMap (travellersmap.gr) was promoted as the Best application for the promotion of data (Best DH Data Visualization).  The TravelTrails: missions and explorations in eastern Mediterranean, 1500-1830 (traveltrails.gr), a project that was realized in cooperation with Gennadius Library, won first prize in the category Best project for the promotion of sources (Best DH Dataset).

Results of the competition here: https://tinyurl.com/3jkfp4rx 

In this year’s competition we competed with organizations of international caliber and scope, such as the British Library, the Harvard University, the National Library of Scotland, and other bodies from different nations.

The Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation is the first foundation so far to have won two prizes on the same year, while in 2017 the same foundation had been awarded first prize for the digital application ToposText (Best DH for public engagement category).

A few words about the two projects:

Result of the successful series “Online tours in Asia Minor” and “Online guided tours in the Aegean”,  TravellersMap is a modern tour map, which aims at promoting the Hellenic world and at acquainting the general public with rare material in general.

TravelTrails is an online database, which indexes, categorizes and analyzes the documented recordings of the travelers of the Eastern Mediterranean since the early 16^th century up until 1830. It is based on the collections of Gennadius Library and those of the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation, and helps users to navigate through the varied and rich historical information of the traveling literature.

Both of these digital projects take advantage of documented evidence from the Historical Library of the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation, and more specifically from the traveling collection of the President of the Foundation, Mr Panayotis K. Laskaridis. Results of years of effort and research, our applications promote the digital humanities as  the future of the libraries, in Greece and the world. Our Foundation is preparing several other digital applications, too, in order to promote the richness of our collections and of our libraries.

We wish to wholeheartedly thank you for your precious support, which contributes to developing our work on a daily basis, a legacy for the future generations.