Information technology and archives: Italy’s largest film archive to be digitized and freely available

Google Inc. will digitize the largest film archive of Italy, which belongs to the company Cinecitta Luce.

According to the agreement, Google will digitize over 100, 000 video and more than 3 million images, while Cinecitta Luce will provide a free access to the digital copies. About 300 thousand of videos have already been available on a special channel on YouTube.

Cinecitta Luce is founded by the merger of the Institute Luce and the film company Cinecitta in 2008. Luce has the world's largest database of newsreels and photographs of Benito Mussolini, as well as records from the Vatican, the Olympic Games of 1960s, held in Rome, and videos of the daily life of the Italian capital.

Google is not engaged in digitizing of historical documents for the first time. The Corporation has already participated in the publication of the archive of Nelson Mandela, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the archive of photographic documents, dedicated to the Holocaust.