In order to preserve its rich heritage for future generations, The FIA will digitize its archive, creating an electronic library that will be accessible to everyone in 2024, when the FIA will celebrate its 120th anniversary. Today, at the FIA Annual General Meeting in Bologna, a trial version of the electronic library was presented to FIA member clubs for feedback on search functions and information access.
The electronic library will bring together Motor Sport and Mobility databases dating back 120 years, making facts and figures searchable and comparable. It will be an important tool for the FIA University’s work and, by being made public, will be a valuable resource for anyone interested in the history of motorsport.
President of the International Automobile Federation Mohammed bin Sulayem He stated: “I am delighted to officially launch the project to digitize the FIA’s archives and e-library. I know it will be a valuable resource for our staff, member clubs, academics, journalists, researchers and motorsports enthusiasts. Automotive and mobility documents, the e-library will contribute to our main manifesto goal of making the FIA Automobiles is a knowledge-based federation, and I invite all FIA member clubs to join us in this effort, testing the beta launched today and sending us their feedback so that together with them we can build an effective and practical tool to preserve the FIA’s heritage for future generations.”.
The beta version of the e-library is the result of months of hard work by the FIA team made up of representatives from the Sport, Mobility, ICT and Legal departments, as well as digitization and archiving experts. Together, they find the right technology for Scan unique documents that are easily damagedusing modern classification and indexing principles, serving the interests of professionals and the general public.
The FIA benefited from the support and insights of the founding members: the Royal Automobile Club (RAC – UK), the Koninklijke Nederlandsche Automobilel (KNAC – The Netherlands) and the Real Automóvil Club de España (RACE – Spain) who had already had their archives digitized.
Commenting on the collaboration, Founding Members Club (FMC) President Karl Honer said: “As historic automobile associations and founding members of the FIA, we must preserve our heritage, share it with the younger generation and use it to shape our future. At KNAC we decided to digitize our archives a few years ago and were delighted to partner with the FIA. We hope this federation will help build a robust electronic library, allowing Access to valuable historical documents for the benefit of society as a whole.”And the
FIA member clubs are encouraged to beta test the e-library and share their feedback with the FIA team to make the tool as easy to use as possible. The goal is to make the electronic library accessible to everyone on the occasion of the 120th anniversary of the founding of the federation in 2024.
As part of the project to digitize the FIA’s archives and e-library, the Max Mosley Memorial Library will be set up at the FIA headquarters in Paris. The FIA team will also publish interesting stories that were discovered during the digitization of the FIA’s centenary archives.
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