Dear readers! I have a pleasure to announce that we have completed the second stage of the continuation phase of the Digitization Project of Kindred Languages by releasing all the pre-selected monographs in our online collection, Fenno-Ugrica. It is a milestone reached, indeed!
From time to time, we do invite researchers to share their views on the materials, which have been published in our Fenno-Ugrica collection. This time, mme Merja Salo from the University of Helsinki discusses the current state of written Ob-Ugric languages.
/ Jussi-Pekka
The 12th Bibliotheca Baltica Symposium will be held at the Södertörn University on the 9th and 10th of October 2014. Bibliotheca Baltica, says the website, aims at uniting all types of libraries in the Baltic Sea Area in recognition of their joint responsibility to increase their efforts in preserving, developing, cataloging, publicizing, and making accessible their part of the Baltic Sea Area heritage. With 10 membering countries, I reckon, it is a beautifully formated goal for this consortium of research libraries.
The digitization of materials in Finno-Ugric languages in the national libraries operating in the Russian Federation has grown significantly during the past few years. Many Russian libraries have established their own digital collections and given the public either full or restricted access to the materials. The assumption is that the digitization and improved accessibility to Finno-Ugric materials both old and new promotes the language learning of native speakers of these languages. These Finno-Ugric languages can be thought to represent a crucial resource or the worldview of their communities, cultures and traditions – and culture, traditions and the worldview are best transmitted in free use of the native language.
Recently, we have linked some new collections onto Uralica in co-operation with the National Library of Komi and University of Tartu Library. The material from Komi contains musical notes and manuscripts of local composers, whereas the linked documents from Estonia consist of writings in and about the Livonian languages.
/ Jussi-Pekka
The continuation phase of the Digitization Project of Kindred Languages (2014-2015) took off in January 2014. Since then, we have conducted the copyright clearance for all material that will be digitized and published by the end of this year. Also, naturally, we have signed the needed agreements with the National Library of Russia on digitization of the material. Not to mention, there’s a great deal of work done behind the scenes: the development of our OCR editor has taken a step forward, and a plenty of time has been spend on post-production of material here in Helsinki. By the mid-July, we have published exactly new 400 monographs in Khanty, Mansi, Hill and Meadow Mari, Nenets, Selkup, Komi-Permyak, Komi-Zyrian and Udmurt in our Fenno-Ugrica collection. We more than are glad that we have passed the first round of release now.
With the help of fund, received from the Finnish Ministry of Education and Cultures, we are developing the Uralica service that aims to bring together libraries and other institutions that possess digital content in Uralic languages. The latest addition was made last week, when we linked some digitized material from the Komi National Library onto Uralica. The linked material in Komi can be accessed here.
From time to time, we have invited the researchers of Uralic languages to share their views on the material that is made available at our Fenno-Ugrica collection. This time, Mrs.Sirkka Saarinen, the professor of Finno-Ugric languages at the University of Turku is giving her outlook to the recently published books in Udmurt language.
This recently added collection of Fenno-Ugrica consists of 57 monographs in Komi-Permyak and of 89 in Komi-Zyrian. Komi-Zyrian is the largest language of the area and so there are more monographs in this language represented at the collection. Continue reading
The project has proceeded with the addition of 54 monographs in Udmurt languages onto Fenno-Ugrica. The main part of these items in Udmurt consists of religion, ABC-, grammar, text and orthography books for the elementary school and the adult education. Continue reading