Privacy Notice

This Privacy Notice explains how the Impresso project may process your personal data and the rights you are entitled to.

1. About

About this notice. This Privacy Notice provides general information that applies in various situations, e.g.:

  • whether you register as a user of the Impresso interface or API;
  • when you participate to an event organised by the Impresso project;
  • when you register to the Impresso mailing list;
  • when you participate in a survey conducted by the Impresso project.

About the Impresso project.“Impresso - Media Monitoring of the Past II. Beyond Borders: Connecting Historical Newspapers and Radio” (“Impresso”) is a research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant No. CRSII5_213585) and the Luxembourg National Research Fund (grant No. 17498891).

Impresso aims to enable the joint exploration of newspaper and radio archive contents across time, language and national borders by co-designing and developing an open and generic technological framework for the seamless exploration of semantically connected media archives across languages. The project develops natural language processing techniques to enrich the media archives with semantic annotations and to advance digital history research and methods. Impresso designs, implements and provides access to a Graphical User Interface (“interface”) and an Application Programming Interface (API) to explore, visualise and compare vast amounts of historical print and audio collections.

Impresso receives high-quality media archive collections from partner cultural heritage institutions (national libraries, archives, media institutions or newspapers) across Europe. Together, these collections form the Impresso corpus.

2. Who is responsible for the processing of your personal data?

The Impresso project is carried out by a consortium of four universities:

  • École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland;
  • Institut für Computerlinguistik of the Universität Zürich (UZH), Zürich, Switzerland;
  • University of Luxembourg (C2DH), Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg;
  • Université de Lausanne Unicentre (UNIL), Lausanne, Switzerland.

These partners are joint data controllers and processors of the personal data that is collected in the context of the activities of the Impresso project.

The Impresso project collects and processes your personal data in accordance with the Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regards to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data (General Data Protection Regulation, hereinafter “GDPR”) and/or the Federal Act on Data Privacy of 25 September 2020 (“Loi fédérale sur la protection des données” (LDP), RS 235.1), as the case may be.

4. Which personal data do we collect and for which purpose?

The processing of your personal data is based on your consent. By registering for one of the situations listed below, you consent to the processing of the data necessary for the organisation and execution of that situation.

  • Case 1: You are a user of the Impresso interface or browse the Impresso project website:
  • We collect your de-identified IP-address for statistical purposes.
  • We collect cookies. Cookies are small text files placed on the hard drive of your device. There are several types of cookies: Session cookies are temporary bits of information that are erased once you exit your web browser window or otherwise turn your computer off. Persistent cookies remain on your computer until you delete them or they expire. We use cookies to recognise your browser and session and provide you with the best user experience. If you wish to disable or control your cookies, refer to cookiesandyou.com

  • Case 2: You are a registered user of the Impresso interface and/or the API:

    We collect your first name, last name and email address. The purpose is to operate user authentication services on the interface and API and to enable the creation of user-related elements (e.g. collections of articles).

  • Case 3: You are a registered recipient of the Impresso mailing list:

    We collect your first name, last name and email address. The purpose is to communicate information and updates about the project. We use Mailchimp to send out newsletters. A subscription to the newsletter requires acceptance of Mailchimp’s terms of use.

  • Case 4: You are a registered attendee or speaker to an event organised by the Impresso project.

    We collect your first name, last name and email address. We may also collect your title, job title, organisation, and dietary requests (if any, for organising meals), information about the form of transport used and hotel, and banking information (for the purpose of reimbursement of travel expenses/allowances). The purpose is to handle registration and attendance, reporting on the event, as well as event follow-up actions, such as sharing presentations among participants and feedback collection.

    In the event that photographs and audio and/or video recordings are to be made during the event, this will only be done with the prior consent of the speakers and participants. These photos/videos may be published by the Impresso project for communication and/or educational purposes.

  • Case 5: You participate in a survey conducted by the Impresso project.

    We collect your first name, last name, email address, job title and domain of expertise.

  • Case 6: Historical personal data.

    We automatically extract person names from the Impresso corpus using machine learning techniques and enriched them with additional information (e.g. life dates, images) derived from publicly accessible repositories such as Wikidata and VIAF. The aim is to enable historical research.

5. Who accesses your data and to whom is it disclosed?

With the exception of the Mailchimp newsletter (case 3 above), access to your data is only granted to project’s staff involved in the operation of the interface and API, communication activities and organisation of events. We will never sell your personal data for marketing purposes.

User data submitted to Mailchimp will also be accessible to Mailchimp in accordance with their terms of use.

In the case of event organisation, the Impresso project may use a ticketing and registration platform such as EventBrite, in which case your personal data will also be accessible to the platform, according to their privacy notice.

6. What are the data security measures?

A number of technical and organisational measures have been put in place to protect your personal data. Technical measures include appropriate measures to address online security, risk of data loss, alteration or unauthorised access, taking into account the risk presented by the processing and the nature of the data being processed. Organisational measures include restricting access to data to authorised persons with a legitimate need to know for the purposes of this processing operation.

7. Where is your data kept?

With the exception of Mailchimp (Case 3 above), your personal data is mostly processed and stored within the European Union and Switzerland.

The transfer of your contact details to Mailchimp, based in the United States, is ruled by the standard contractual clauses of the European Union as stated by Mailchimp (cf. MailChimp Privacy Policy). The same applies to EventBrite (cf. EventBrite Privacy Policy).

8. How long do we keep your data?

  • Case 1: Anonymised IP addresses are kept for the duration of the project months.
  • Case 2: The personal data of registered users will be kept for as long as the interface and API are maintained. This will be the case until the official end date of the project (28/02/2027), and beyond if the consortium continues to operate.
  • Case 3: The personal data collected by MailChimp is kept as long as the user keeps an account.
  • Case 4: The personal data collected in the context of events is kept until the end date of the project (28.02.2027). The purpose is follow-up actions to the event/conference. Data necessary for logistics purposes (refund of expenses, transport, etc.) are kept according to the rules set in the ETH Act and in the EPFL financial regulation.

10. How do I unsubscribe from the Impresso interface?

This procedure is not yet automated. To unsubscribe please send us an email to info@impresso-project.ch.

11. Data protection rights

You have the right to receive a copy of your personal data and you may request the correction of any personal data which is inaccurate or incomplete. You also have the right to object to the processing of your personal data for legitimate reasons as well as a right to object to the use of that data for prospecting in accordance with applicable laws. When the processing is based on your consent, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time, without affecting the lawfulness of processing based on consent before its withdrawal.

The Impresso project reserves the right to refuse any abusive request or one which is contrary to applicable laws. Finally, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the relevant supervisory authority.

12. How can you lodge a complaint?

If you consider that the Processing of personal data relating to you infringes the GDPR, you will have the right – without prejudice to any other administrative or judicial remedy – to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, in particular in the Member State of your habitual residence, place of work or place of the alleged infringement.

Further information on your rights from University of Luxembourg; EPFL; UNIL and UZH.

13. Applicable law – jurisdiction

The present Notice shall be governed and construed in accordance with Swiss law.

Any dispute concerning the existence, interpretation or performance of this Notice which cannot be settle amicably, shall fall within the jurisdiction of the Courts of Switzerland, without prejudice to the rights of the Data Subjects to bring the matters before the court where he or she has her place of residence as well as its right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority.

14. Contact

For any information concerning this Privacy Policy, please contact the Impresso project at the following mailing address: info@impresso-project.ch.

You may also contact the Data Protection Officers of the Impresso institutions: