Breaking the Library Walls, Bridging the Gap with Generation Next

The Onassis Library is a historical and special collections library founded in 2009 by the Onassis Foundation and housed in a neoclassical building in Plaka at 56, Amalias Avenue, Athens, Greece. It houses two collections of books (the Hellenic Library and the Travel Book Library), a collection of great artworks, and two archives (the Cavafy Archive and the Aristotle Onassis Business Archive). These books and archives have been digitized and are freely available online. The library’s challenge is not only to protect and preserve this cultural wealth, but to also make it accessible to all, promoting even greater social and educational benefits. The library seeks to inspire the new generation to rediscover the cultural heritage, to reuse and reinterpret it, to conquer it spiritually, and to invent the future from the past. Since 2016, the Onassis Library opened its doors to the public, inaugurating a series of digital educational activities, showcasing its rare collections. These innovative initiatives encouraged the students, educators, and their families to interact with the Hellenic cultural heritage, fostering bridges of dialogue, connecting with the past, and preparing them to face the technological challenges of the future. Through workshops, Panhellenic competitions, virtual and artificial reality applications, 3D video games, digital storytelling projects, and e-books, young people learned about, brought to life and recreated important historical documents, archives, and artworks by using such digital tools and platforms freely available online.