The Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation (CyBC) has signed a deal with Google and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) to digitise 20 years of archive audio-visual material spanning from 1990 to 2010.

The material, consisting of 12,000 tapes, will be dispatched to Germany after the EBU sent a recommendation to European Union member states to digitise their audio-visual archives. The deal involving CyBC, Google and the EBU was struck last week.

The material’s digitisation process will be free of charge. CyBC will be responsible for organising, shipping and insuring the audio-visual material.

The total duration of the tapes is estimated at around 15,000 hours. Of this, around 3,000 hours have already been digitised in Cyprus. The project is expected to be completed in 15 months.