Portal for travel literature
INSPIRAL is an online portal for travel literature and historical geography that holds rare books from the 15th to the 18th centuries from private and public collections. As an open access knowledge portal, it is geared to both the general public and specialised researchers. Through its easy-to-use search engine, the user can search for catalogued information taken from travel texts (also containing engravings and maps) through keywords, subjects/categories, people’s names and place names. At the same time, the user is able to view the entire page on which the information appears, as the platform contains the respective book pages in digital format.
Planning for the future
The platform was inspired by the Sylvia Ioannou Foundation's rich collection of travel literature. Committed to a shared vision of collaboration and dissemination of knowledge, INSPIRAL invites and encourages institutions that wish to use its scientific tools and to work together with the Foundation by incorporating material from their own collections.