Documents dating back to the 16th century are being brought to the digital age in a project being carried out by the Notarial Archives in Malta and the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library of the St John’s University in the US.

Launching the project this morning, Parliamentary Secretary Jason Azzopardi said that the pikor project would digitise some of the oldest document at the Notarial Archives in St Christopher Street, Valletta. These documents would then be placed at the disposal of researchers on the internet. Students following the Library, Information and Archive Studies course at the university would be helping with the project.

Dr Azzopardi said that concrete measures were being taken for the first time towards the preservation of these treasures, which were a mine of information on the social life of the Maltese in the past.

Once the project was concluded, the results would be examined with the aim of continuing with the archiving process in a systematic manner, Dr Azzopardi said.

To preserve the documents, each page would be digitally photographed and placed in a database.

Although it was the government’s intention to place the documents on the internet, the Notarial Archives would retain copyright.