This year, I think, Christmas came early and Santa had his bag full of surprises. The most looked-for Christmas gift was the decision on the continuing of our digitization project. In early December, the Kone Foundation made its mind and awarded the National Library of Finland and its Digitization Project of Kindred Languages a grant, which is meant for realizing the Follow-Up Project in 2014 and 2015.

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Just when you thought it was safe to get back into the water? No! It’s true. Things are getting livelier with the extension of cooperation between EKI (the Estonian Language Institute, in Tallinn) and the NLF (National Library of Finland, in Helsinki). The partners have agreed to “further develop professional cooperation” by 1)  promoting the joint Digitization Project of Kindred Languages to enhance scholarly communication and research, 2) promoting the data exchange in the course of Fenno-Ugrica database that aims for sharing the digitized material Livonian languages and 3) Promoting the data exchange in the course of Uralica Hub Project that aims for sharing the bibliographical information on digitized publications in Livonian languages held at the repositories of the both institutions, the EKI and the NLF.

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Yes, finally, we have launched the new and fancy interface for the Uralica portal. As you may notice, its attractive design has something in relation with her siblings –  the Finna information search service, which brings together the collections of Finnish archives, libraries and museums and the search service for National Library collections. Despite the notable design, the Uralica is not just a carbon copy of Finnas, but it is directed to a specific audience that seeks information in kindred languages.

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Despite the fact that we are still constructing our hub of digitized material in Uralic languages, we have managed to add some new links of the digitized material onto Uralica Hub. The latest arrivals do come from the Digital Library of the National Library of Udmurtia and they consist of 128 monographs in Udmurt and Russian languages.

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As we have earlier indicated, we would like to support the idea of collecting the various metadata of digitized material together and make them as searchable through one interface. This week we have launched the beta version of our hub for the digitized uralic/finno-ugric materials.

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After presenting the initiative in Manchester, the Digitization Project of Kindred Languages is heading towards the next phase by inviting the researchers to join the discussion over the follow-up project for the 2014-2016. The briefing is mainly directed to those, who have received the grant for their research from the Kone Foundation and are doing their research within the Language Programme. Equally, this session will be perfect for those, who are interested in exploring new opportunities within the field of the Finno-Ugric languages.

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As you may have noticed, I haven’t written anything from the sessions, which were held on Thursday and Friday. I participated in S093 (New perspectives on classification and methodology in history of science: theoretical and technological bases for managing primary sources) and S094 (History of science and the ecology of knowledge: the limitations, expectations, and needs of four knowledge communities), which were thematically so close to each other, that I decided to conclude my thoughts on these sessions in one blog entry. I have given this blog post the title: libraries, metadata and publishing, which is into my opinion a broad concept enough in order to cover all the discussions of these sessions.

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