Digital Transitions, a developer of digital products and solutions worldwide, in cooperation with the State Archival Service of Ukraine and the Central State Archive-Museum of Literature and Art of Ukraine (hereinafter referred to as CDAMLM Ukraine), is launching a project to digitalize documents from the collections of CDAMLM Ukraine that highlight the history of Ukrainian culture from the late 19th century to the first half of the 20th century. This project is the second for Digital Transitions in Ukraine. In the summer of 2023, the collection of the National Reserve “Kyiv Pechersk Lavra” was digitized.
CDAMLM Ukraine is a special institution that stores, professionally processes, and popularizes archival, museum, and library collections. It is the largest archive in Europe for documents related to literature and art. These collections include the documentary heritage of the “golden names” of Ukrainian culture: historical documents of Taras Shevchenko, Pavlo Tyczyna, Oleksandr Dovzhenko, the family of Kazimir Malevich, Maria Prymachenko, Oleksandr Bohomatov, Alla Horska, Ivan-Bohdan Vesolovsky, Myroslav Skorik, and many other artists. The invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation has led to the threat of losing this unique documentary heritage.
In 2023, an agreement was concluded between the Archive-Museum and Digital Transitions, which provides for the free provision of the most modern scanning equipment, support, and personal training for the archive’s employees in order for them to continue digitizing the archive’s valuable document collection.
The goal of the project is to preserve valuable archival documents related to literature and art in digital form. This will ensure the best storage conditions for the originals and provide fast and secure access to their information for users who will work with digital copies, while the valuable originals will remain in their permanent storage locations in the repositories. The high-quality copies created within the framework of the project will subsequently be published on the Inter-Archive Information Portal to provide free access to them for all interested users in 24/7 mode. The project will significantly increase the digital collection of copies already created by the archive, and the acquisition of new professional knowledge by the archive’s employees will enable them to use it in the future to continue digitizing documents from all of the archive’s collections. The implementation of the project is another step towards the creation of digital resources of Ukraine that contribute to the preservation of our past, the historical memory of Ukraine as part of world history.
The key to the successful implementation of the project is the application of a unique digitalization system equipped with a high-precision digital camera, which is provided by Digital Transitions and which will allow the creation of high-quality digital copies of documents in various formats.
Over a two-week training course, the equipment is being set up and the staff of CDAMLM Ukraine is learning new techniques. Under the supervision of the curator Marta Muzyka, they are learning to set up the equipment and create digital copies of archival documents, including large-format documents, non-standard sizes, and documents on complex backgrounds (tracing paper, photo documents, etc.).