It hasn’t been long since the publication of “What to Read in the Archives.” During this time, the number of documents that have been digitized and made publicly available has increased. Perhaps the most significant development is the appearance on the website of the Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine of four large documents from 1732—the so-called “Khrushchev Census.” Now, the descendants of the Cossacks of the Sloboda Regiments will finally be able to find their distant ancestors! However, we shouldn’t get too excited. My relatives, for example, have lived in the settlement of Shipovatoye for centuries. The entry about it in the document “Records of the Household Census of Settlements in the Izyum Sloboda Regiment, Compiled by Officers of Major M. Khrushchev’s Life Guard Unit” reads as follows:
So archival documents may not be understandable or interesting to everyone. Library websites featuring digitized books can be an equally wonderful and useful alternative. Although the question of which format to read in continues to spark debate in society even today. On the one hand, more and more people are reading books in digital format. Others argue that “no internet or computer can replace a paper book.” And I would highly recommend, by the way, reading the 2010 work titled “Don’t Hope to Get Rid of Books!” In its pages, two renowned European intellectuals—the French novelist Jean-Claude Carrière and the Italian writer Umberto Eco— drawing on all their erudition and wit, engage in a friendly conversation, debating and trying to find answers to the questions: What is a book, and what is its future? Among other things, the late Umberto Eco draws the reader’s attention to the following:
With the Internet, we have returned once again to the age of the alphabet. While we once believed that civilization had entered the age of images, the computer has brought us back to the Gutenberg galaxy, and now everyone, without exception, has to read… All the various forms the book has taken as an object have not changed either its purpose or its syntax over more than five centuries. A book is like a spoon, a hammer, a wheel, or a pair of scissors. Once they were invented, nothing better could be devised. You can’t make a spoon any better than it already is… The book has already proven itself, and it’s hard to imagine anything better suited to performing the same functions. Perhaps its components will evolve in some way—for example, pages might no longer be made of paper. But a book will remain a book.
For me personally, despite my sincere love for paper books, the value of digital online libraries lies in the fact that they offer open access to materials that are not always readily available in a library reading room, let alone at home. Very few of us can afford to own a 15th-century book or complete bound volumes of early 20th-century newspapers. As a rule, when people talk about all kinds of wonderful online libraries, Western European websites are most often cited as examples. However, I can assure you that Ukraine is just as good in this regard.
First and foremost, I would like to draw your attention to the website of the Central Scientific Library of V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University—“eScriptorium”. But not at all because it’s based in Kharkiv. It contains one of the largest digital collections in Ukraine (in my opinion) of rare editions, manuscripts, and newspapers, many of which are unique, and it’s simply impossible to find them in other libraries or full-text archives. The resource itself is well-organized and divided into numerous sections and collections. Thanks to this, it’s easy to find and download, for example, the 1534 edition of *The Herbal* from the library of Ivan the Terrible or that of Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov’s wife. The site’s keyword search also works well. You can also find the publication you’re looking for by publication date, author, or topic. The “Kharkiv Periodicals” section deserves special attention; it contains approximately 4,757 digital copies of newspapers and magazines from the early 19th to the 20th century. Another portion of the digitized newspapers from the university library’s collection is available on the KARAZIN.Back2News website. It currently contains 6,331 issues of the newspaper “Yuzhny Krai” from 1880 to 1917.
There are just as many digitized Ukrainian periodicals in the “LIBRARIA” electronic archive (https://libraria.ua/). Incidentally, access to this archive became free during the quarantine.
The V. I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine, the largest in our country in terms of collection size and floor space, is keeping pace with the digitization of books and regularly posts electronic copies of them on its website “Digital Library of Historical and Cultural Heritage”. The thematic sections are user-friendly, and I was also very pleased with the multilingual interface. Since on many websites this is done just “for show” or only on the very first few pages, I took the time to check—and everything actually works really well. For example, the page for the 1912 “Album of Students of the Kyiv Theological Academy” looks like this in the Irish version.
And you know, I’m truly delighted that students and researchers—whether from Dublin or Tokyo—will be able to discover the history and culture of Ukraine thanks to the books available on the Vernadsky Library’s website.
The digital library on the website of the Institute of History of Ukraine is regularly updated. There you will find numerous books published since Ukraine gained independence.
Ukrainian online libraries created through private initiatives are also worth exploring. Those who love painting will enjoy the one-of-a-kind resource “Library of Ukrainian Art”, created by writer Kateryna Lebedeva. It features albums of paintings and artists’ biographies.
“Diasporiana,” a large, entirely Ukrainian-language digital library, created through the efforts of Oleg Boguslavsky, a resident of Zaporizhzhia, and a team of volunteers, offers anyone interested the opportunity to immerse themselves in the world of the printed word of the Ukrainian diaspora, thanks to thousands of newspapers and books.
Well, now let’s move on to Western Europe. We’ll start with the Vatican Library, which is considered one of the most mysterious. So, despite its extreme secrecy, the library has its own website. Given that the digitization of the Vatican Apostolic Library’s collections began back in 2010, you can now read tens of thousands of digital copies of beautiful ancient manuscripts, maps, and books without leaving your home.
Among them are illustrated manuscripts from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, an Aztec manuscript from the pre-Columbian era, 17th-century Japanese watercolor illustrations, and Dante Alighieri’s *Divine Comedy* accompanied by a magnificent series of illustrations by the great Sandro Botticelli. And best of all, you can not only view all this treasure but also download it! So be warned: you might end up spending a long time on this site.
But the website of the National Library of France—“Gallica”—might not just surprise you, but leave you speechless. According to official information, as of today, more than 6 million documents of various types (books, magazines, newspapers, photographs, cartoons, posters, maps, audio, and video materials) are available there for free. And based on my own many years of experience using this resource, I can confidently say that you can find absolutely anything there—from maps of the Izyum Sloboda Regiment dating back to 1725 to a photo album featuring 20th-century photographs of the Carpathians.
Austria is not far behind France. The “ANNO – Austrian Newspapers Online” website contained approximately 17 million pages of newspapers and magazines from various European countries in 2016 alone. It’s hard to say exactly how much content is there now, in 2020. Equally large-scale and ambitious is the “Upper Austrian State Digital Library” project. It contains a simply enormous number of books, ranging from medieval manuscripts to works on the history of World War I. All of this wealth of material is, of course, in German.
In Poland, there is a website called “Polona”, which is considered one of the most advanced digital libraries in the world. The primary mission of this resource is to showcase Polish culture and traditions through the materials it hosts. The number of digitized books, manuscripts, maps, photographs, postcards, and other items on the site is growing rapidly. Most of the materials available in the online library are, of course, in Polish. However, by visiting a special section, you can filter materials in any of 68 languages, including Russian and Ukrainian. The website is thoughtfully designed down to the smallest detail, making it a very pleasant and comfortable experience to use. Of course, it’s not the only one in the country. You can also explore Poland’s rich cultural heritage by visiting, for example, the “Opole Digital Library”.
Of course, the scope of a single article doesn’t allow me to cover and describe all such resources. Here, I’m simply sharing my personal experience. And I’m glad that, thanks to projects like these, people are starting to learn foreign languages, the world is becoming more open, borders between countries and cultures are disappearing, and e-books are serving as a unique bridge between them.
