The INSPIRAL portal for travel literature, with Cyprus as its starting point, gradually builds its international character and travels to other places (Sifnos, Kimolos, Preveza-Amvrakikos), with the contribution of special libraries such as the Gennadius Library - American School of Classical Studies at Athens, soon the Benaki Museum and the Aktia Nicopolis Foundation.
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. Initiated by Zefyros research programme of the Sylvia Ioannou Foundation and the University of Cyprus under the scientific supervision of Professor Julia Chatzipanagioti-Sangmeister, INSPIRAL is an open access knowledge portal, 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.
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.