Gábor Papp, PhD, is a research fellow in the 19th-century research group at the Institute of Art History at the Research Centre for the Humanities. His research interests include 19th-century Hungarian and Central European architecture and urban planning. His research focuses on the various forms of architectural knowledge transfer and the role played by German and Austrian architectural centres in disseminating common knowledge and historical styles in Central Europe. Another of his research areas is nationalism and architecture. Specifically, he explores how architecture served national self-image, and the emergence of the need for architectural expression of national identity and the creation of a national style in Central Europe in the 19th century.

As an ARP Ambassador, Gábor believes that the digital holdings of the Institute of Art History should be reposited in a manner that reflects the characteristics of their collections, some of which are museal. The Institute's archive, photographic collection, lexicon collection, register collection, seal copy collection and, not least, the psychiatric art collection all contain unique pieces, some of which are artefacts. The curators of these collections are understandably keen to see the digitised collections managed in a structured way, stored in a database and made searchable. While a significant proportion of the material in these collections has been digitised, their repository archiving must take into account a number of aspects, some museological and some legal. As the Institute's Research Data Officer, Gábor has spent the last few months working with colleagues to develop a set of criteria that meet these specific needs.

His research project, which has been brought into the Ambassadors programme, aims to improve the organisation and accessibility of a large (643 GB) collection of architectural photographs created as part of earlier Institute projects. The project will enable us to understand the specific requirements for housing digital image collections and demonstrate how such a substantial volume of digital material can be securely stored and easily retrieved in the repository. The experience gained from this work will also be useful for storing similar institutional material with specific requirements.