The Maltese notarial archives are set to become more accessible and interactive thanks to an innovative project launched on Friday using artificial intelligence and knowledge graph technologies.
The NotaryPedia project is a national initiative combining advanced technology with the preservation of Malta’s historical and legal heritage.
The platform will make these documents, many of which are written in notarial Latin and with spelling of their time, accessible to researchers, historians, journalists, legal professionals and the general public.
It will be used to develop smart tools for automatic transcription and knowledge extraction which will facilitate research and let users discover hidden links in content.
Speaking at the launch, minister for national heritage Owen Bonnici said the project “will put Malta at the forefront of digitising and semantic exploration of historical archives, and will serve as a model for other countries with a similar documentary heritage”.
The notarial archives in Valletta take up 15 kilometres of shelving and are stored in two separate locations, as required by law, one housing all the originals and a secondary one holding copies of the originals as a precaution.
The project is the result of a three-year collaboration between the Department of Artificial Intelligence within the Faculty of ICT at the University of Malta, the Ministry for National Heritage, Arts and Local Government, and the Notarial Archives Foundation.
