New Online Feature Available: OCR Search Applied to Generali’s Heritage

For an international insurance Group with two hundred years of history, having a presence on the web means offering a tool for cultural sharing that extends beyond the corporate sphere. It means providing scholars, researchers and the wider public with direct access to historical databases that would otherwise be difficult to consult. Not merely a digital showcase, but a time machine enabling a journey through a historical memory transformed into a living heritage, accessible to all.

The treasure chest is now open: by entering a keyword in the search field located at the center of every page of the website, users can explore the past from every angle with a single click. Only a few years ago, such a possibility would have been unthinkable for a historical patrimony like Generali’s: 305,000 digital attachments, 55 million searchable words, and 15% of the archives already digitized and available online.

Today, OCR (Optical Character Recognition) search applied to digitized databases is transforming access to these resources.

Until now, research required the physical consultation of volumes and reliance on inventory descriptions. Today, OCR technology makes it possible to convert any attached image of a reproduced document (currently printed or typewritten texts) into searchable text. Documents become accessible not only through their descriptive records, but also through the text they contain, revealing additional cross-cutting connections among archives, books and works of art within the cultural heritage holdings.

This is made possible through the integration of structured metadata (title, author, date and description in accordance with international standards) with the textual content extracted from images. This is not a traditional search by title, author or subject within a catalogue. It is a search engine that can read.

For professional researchers and those with a passion for the past alike, direct access to primary sources provides incomparable support, capable of leading to unexpected discoveries.

For Generali, cultural heritage thus becomes a renewed and shared resource for knowledge.