Breathing Life into Rare Book Collections: The Digitization of the Taiga Skit Old Believers Library
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Elena Dutchak
Abstract
The number of information resources that are being developed on platforms of university libraries is growing like an avalanche. However, few of them are in great demand and an informative support for scientific research. This problem is especially urgent for the book collections of the Russian Old Believers stored in the libraries of Europe, Asia and America. The Old Believers book collections include manuscripts and printed books from the Middle Ages and author’s works and compilations by contemporary leaders of this religious movement written in the Church Slavonic language in the second half of the seventeenth to twentieth centuries. Placing digital copies of these rare books on the Internet without providing the information about the social and cultural condition of establishment of the Old Believers book collections (i) reduces the role of the libraries to the technical implementers of digitizing projects and (ii) contradicts the current approaches to the study of the textual heritage of the Old Believers – a denomination for which the reception of the Christian practices of reading and writing has become a means of adaptation to the macrosocial changes. The article reports on a study of the views of librarians, researchers and the Old Believers and demonstrates the concept of the “Taiga Skit Old Believers Library” digital resource, showing the unique book collection in the context of peasant colonization of Taiga Siberia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the features of this living religious community. Research is based on experience of a 30-year collaboration between the Research Library of Tomsk State University –Siberia’s oldest university library – and the humanists of Tomsk State University in the field of studying Old Believers family and community libraries, and carried out within the framework of the development program of its Special Collections Department.
Funding statement: This research is supported by Tomsk State University Competitiveness Improvement Program.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the Old Believers Taiga community, which entrusted their books to the Research Library of our university and which has been respecting our studies for many years, and Professor David Nicholas for his invaluable advice and help to make this research design possible.
Appendix: List of Used Online Resources
Archaeographic Laboratory of Historical Faculty of Moscow State University. [In Russian]. Accessed February 8, 2015. http://www.hist.msu.ru/Labs/ARHEO/.
State Public Historical Library of Russia. “Books of Cyrillic Printing of sixteenth–twentieth Centuries.” [In Russian]. Accessed February 8, 2015. http://rarebook.shpl.ru/.
Collection of Cyrillic books. (Foundation for Support of Russian Culture “Sobornik”). [In Russian]. Accessed February 8, 2015. URL: http://sobornik.ru/.
Laboratory of Information Systems in Historical Sciences of Chelyabins State University. Complete Collection of Russian Chronicles. [In Russian]. Accessed February 8, 2015. http://psrl.csu.ru/.
Chelyabinsk Regional Research Library. “Cyrillic Manuscripts of sixteenth–twentieth Centuries in the Collections of the Chelyabinsk Region.” [In Russian]. Accessed February 8, 2015. http://resources.chelreglib.ru:6005/root2/kp/cyrillic/index.html.
State Public Scientific and Technological Library of the Siberian Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences. “Manuscripts and Printed Books from the Siberian Collections.” [In Russian]. Accessed February 8, 2015. http://www.spsl.nsc.ru/rbook/.
St. Petersburg Society of Byzantium and Slavic Studies. “Digital Library of Paleoslavistic.” [In Russian]. Accessed February 8, 2015. http://byzantinorossica.org.ru/.
Electronic body of ancient song manuscripts. [In Russian]. Accessed February 8, 2015. http://znamen.ru/index.php.
History Faculty of the Ural Federal University (Yekaterinburg). “Electronic Copies of Books of Laboratory for Archeographic Research.” [In Russian]. Accessed February 8, 2015. http://hist.igni.urfu.ru/lai/digital.htm.
The Institute of Russian Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences. “Electronic Library of Ancient Russian Literature.” [In Russian]. Accessed February 8, 2015. http://lib.pushkinskijdom.ru.
Library of Patristic Literature. [In Russian]. Accessed February 8, 2015. http://www.orthlib.ru/.
Noncommercial Partnership “Manuscripts of Ancient Russia” with the participation of the Institute of Russian Language of Russian Academy of Sciences and the publishing house “Languages of Slavic Culture”. “Manuscript of Ancient Russia.” [In Russian]. Accessed February 8, 2015. http://manuscripts.ru/.
Manuscripts of the National Library of the Republic of Karelia. [In Russian]. Accessed February 8, 2015. http://library.karelia.ru/Resursy/Rukopisnye_knigi/.
Library of Frontistes. “Monuments of Ancient Slavic Literature.” [In Russian]. Accessed February 8, 2015. http://ksana-k.ru/.
“Ostromir Gospels and the Manuscript Tradition of the New Testament Texts.” [In Russian]. Accessed February 8, 2015. http://www.nlr.ru/exib/Gospel/.
Scientific Library of Petrozavodsk State University. “Printed Cyrillic Books from the Collection of Rare Books Department.” [In Russian]. Accessed February 8, 2015. http://library.petrsu.ru/rarebook/kirill.html.
“Psalter and the Horologion.” [In Russian]. Accessed February 8, 2015. http://www.nlr.ru/e-res/psaltyr.
Laboratory for Automation of Philological Work, Udmurt State University and Department of Linguistics of Izhevsk State Technical University. “Slavonic Written Heritage.” [In Russian]. Accessed February 8, 2015. http://manuscripts.ru/.
Department of Mathematical Linguistics of Philological Faculty of St. Petersburg State University. “St. Petersburg Corpus of Hagiographic Texts.” [In Russian]. Accessed February 8, 2015. http://project.phil.spbu.ru/scat.
Russian State Library and Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius Trinity House. “Manuscript Collection.” [In Russian]. Accessed February 8, 2015. http://old.stsl.ru/manuscripts/index.php.
Arkhangelsk Regional Scientific Library. “Virtual Museum of the Rare Book Collections of the Arkhangelsk North” [In Russian]. Accessed February 8, 2015. http://virtmuseum.aonb.ru/proekt.html.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- A Theory of Metadata Enriching and Filtering
- A Study on Research Trends in Public Library Research in Korea Using Keyword Networks
- The Contribution of Effective Library and Information Services to Academic Achievements at Some Selected Universities in Ghana
- Information Needs in Prisons and Jails: A Discourse Analytic Approach
- The Economic Value of Book Loans – The Case of the Municipal Library of Prague
- Breathing Life into Rare Book Collections: The Digitization of the Taiga Skit Old Believers Library
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- A Theory of Metadata Enriching and Filtering
- A Study on Research Trends in Public Library Research in Korea Using Keyword Networks
- The Contribution of Effective Library and Information Services to Academic Achievements at Some Selected Universities in Ghana
- Information Needs in Prisons and Jails: A Discourse Analytic Approach
- The Economic Value of Book Loans – The Case of the Municipal Library of Prague
- Breathing Life into Rare Book Collections: The Digitization of the Taiga Skit Old Believers Library
