Maison d’Érasme shines a light on its censored texts

Arkhênum has just started a new project in Belgium at the Maison d’Érasme museum in Anderlecht. This commission is unique in a number of ways: First, due to the specialised processing of the collections (object-mode digitisation followed by page-by-page digitisation with a restricted 45° opening angle), and secondly, because of the distinctive characteristics of the collections.

A further distinctive feature of the project is its tripartite structure, with Arkhênum working closely alongside the Maison d’Érasme, custodian of the relevant collections, and the Digital Heritage Department (Central Administration for Culture) for the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, which is backing the initiative financially under the Pep’s Plan.

Arkhênum, which is part of MEMORIST, was selected via public tender to digitise 49 rare works from the museum’s Erasmus collection, all of which testify to the censorship practices of the 16th and 17th centuries. Although Erasmus was not censored during his lifetime, a number of his works were placed on the Index of Prohibited Books and censored during the 16th century: pages were cut out, passages were obscured with iron gall ink, slips of paper were glued over words, texts were crossed out, content was expurgated, and so forth.

Project executed in situ in Anderlecht

Document-by-document capture in object mode…

Under the terms of the contract, four views are to be generated for each of the 49 documents:

• Isometric overview
• Rear
• Front cover
• Back cover

In response to Maison d’Érasme’s request, we set up a custom configuration that has already been tested during previous projects. For the best results, our technical teams installed a fully outfitted photographic studio on site consisting of a digital back, two softbox lights and a system for creating a uniform background.

…supplemented with a 45° scan

Restricted-opening scanning: a growing demand

Arkhênum has already performed similar 45° services, in particular for the project carried out at the German National Library in Leipzig. Here the Arkhênum teams digitised over 200,000 pages on site covering a total of 600 works.

By the end of 2025, our teams will have completed more than 16 projects on-site for clients spanning digitisation, audits and historical research.

Would you like to know more about 45° scanning? Or do you have a project that requires this type of equipment? Get in touch.

Every page turned is an archived story

True Life in God: an AI-enhanced project

MEMORIST, in partnership with its subsidiary Arkhênum, recently undertook a project for the Swiss foundation True Life in God. From analysing the foundation’s requirements to digitising its collections for hosting online, this large-scale project required end-to-end support, tailored to integrate proven heritage digitisation technology with cutting-edge developments in artificial intelligence (AI). Digitisation took place in situ on MEMORIST’s premises in Geneva.

With a solid understanding of the foundation’s needs and having assessed the project’s challenges in detail, our team proposed an AI solution to enhance the data available and make collections easier to access and explore online.

With this project – and similar initiatives carried out for other clients – MEMORIST and Arkhênum joined the 18% of companies using AI in production environments.

HTR-enhanced heritage digitisation

AI optimises HTML data retrieval services

However, analysis confirmed that conventional algorithms could not recover the data accurately, so the team turned to AI once more, writing a custom script to scrape the data from the HTML pages and convert it to a standardised ISO format using an Excel table.

They also used AI to standardise event times, display country flags in ISO format, and translate the town and country names to English.

Thanks to this approach, the resulting content was 99% reliable. The three errors detected were attributable to the website itself and not the AI-driven processing. The content was subsequently imported into the Limb Gallery digital library.

Building open archives for True Life in God

Future opening of a physical museum

In addition to the True Life in God archive website, which provides 24/7 access to resources from many sources, the foundation is already laying the groundwork for the next phase: opening a physical museum in Sweden where visitors and researchers will be able to study the archives or consult publications.

Contact us today to discover how MEMORIST and Arkhênum’s expert digitisation services and AI solutions can bring your archives to life.

Every page turned is an archived story

Talent Story No. 6

“Sharing Arkhênum’s know-how and bringing culture to light”

Laurent Bidet is a consultant in digitisation and heritage promotion, and sharing is in his DNA. Laurent joined Arkhênum in 2017 and today channels the company’s expertise to international clients and the teams working in the Mobilitas Group (Arkhênum’s parent company). His number-one priority is to preserve and showcase the heritage of Africa. “I coordinate every facet of the company’s expertise with this goal in mind,” he explains. “Our mission is to help clients reveal the heritage and history contained in their archives, and to work alongside them to create tools that raise cultural awareness.”

And with good reason: before embarking on the Arkhênum adventure, Laurent worked as an IT sales engineer and as a production manager in archive digitisation. “In 2017, Laurent Onaïnty, Arkhênum’s managing director, was keen to scale up his team to carry out heritage digitisation projects in Africa,” he explains. For Laurent Bidet, joining Arkhênum was an opportunity to “take things up a notch” in line with the company’s goals. This international expansion was made possible thanks to Arkhênum’s own resources and the support of the Mobilitas Group.

Sharing expertise: a real vocation

Laurent’s new role has seen him travel to numerous countries in Africa, where he has learnt about other cultures. Since 2017, Laurent has undertaken projects in, amongst other places, Dakar, and delivered training courses in several countries on the continent. He believes he has “sown seeds in the various African countries I’ve visited where time is perceived differently than in Europe”.

Giving people back the keys to their history

Laurent explains that digital technology can be used to explore, analyse and process information more effectively.

“Heritage digitisation is vital to reveal knowledge and safeguard world heritage. An archive that is fragile and hard to access (except for a privileged few) can quickly and easily be made available to everyone once it has been digitised.”

Arkhênum establishes itself as an international expert

Laurent saw his role expand in 2020 to include the technical analysis of digitisation tenders in Germany, a new market for Arkhênum. “My function – which is mainly technical – means I review tenders, sound the alarm about potential risks, and assess what we can do to bring a project to a successful completion.” It’s an approach that has proved to be a success: two major projects have recently started in Berlin and Leipzig, with Laurent acting as a digitisation consultant expert.

What motivates Laurent in his day-to-day work?

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Talent Story No. 5

“I have the privilege of photographing documents that have never been handled in the 21^st century”

Turning a hobby into a job

Yes, Stéphanie Cousin has turned her passion into her profession! The professional photographer began her career snapping photos in specialist studios before moving to a photo service company where she was team manager for a decade or so.

In 2017, however, on the look-out for new opportunities, Stéphanie responded to an Arkhênum advertisement for a photographer.

Stéphanie joined the book digitisation department before quickly moving to the iconography workshop, where she digitised “iconographic documents that need to be in a very high resolution”, including slides, negatives, postcards and even glass plates. “Working with images has always been a source of inspiration to me and something I’ve found thrilling,” she says.

“A role that guarantees quality”

When handling media, especially negatives, Stéphanie must be extremely vigilant. It’s her responsibility to spot the slightest error or missing document and report the information to her manager who then informs the client.

Stéphanie enjoys adding variety to her work, and she also helps optimise the files resulting from the digitisation process.

“We go back over the framing and colours, upgrading the image to eliminate any damage that has accrued over time,” she explains. “Our goal never changes: to promote every item in a collection as much as  possible.”

Recently, as part of a project for the Fondation des Gueules Cassées (the Foundation of Broken Faces), Stéphanie helped optimise the digital images of glass plates from the First World War. “Revealing the facial injuries – the literal broken faces – of the war veterans before and after surgery was particularly moving,” confesses Stéphanie, for whom Arkhênum’s new slogan, Revealing the Past has particular meaning. “In photography, the developer or developing solution is the product that reveals the image.”

What motivates Stéphanie in her day-to-day work?

Every page turned is an archived story