Google and Yad Vashem
Google means searching for information and the Holocaust Museum of Yad Vashem is all about documenting and presenting historical information.
On Wednesday, in honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yad Vashem and Google announced a partnership that will greatly facilitate preservation of and access to the world’s largest historical collection on the Holocaust.
The staff at Google took the Yad Vashem website and indexed it so all its archive information is accessible by search engines.
The picture database, which includes around 130,000 pictures from the time period of the Holocaust, was transferred to Google which manages it and offers powerful tools to search through the archives.
OCR is a very important technology which is being used as part of this cooperation. Google has implemented experimental optical character recognition technology to carry out this project, making previously difficult to locate documents searchable and discoverable online.
User-generated content is another important development in the ability to respond online to the content in the archives. Yad Vashem hopes to receive more information and stories from readers who will add their personal side and express their connection to the pictures and stories in the Yad Vashem archives.
In regards to the concern that allowing such heavy user interaction might lead to anti-Semitic and hateful statements being posted, the Chairman of Yad Vashem explained that the content will be monitored, and added that in order to respond one must also sign in to the Yad Vashem website.
(IsraelNationalNews.com)
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