Scanning books were done using professional equipment that provides the high quality scans and eliminates the negative effect on the original. 

As the Chronicle is quite old and written form old Russian language (before reforms), “Karpylivka Chronicles” is only briefly demonstrated by reading only selected passages to the children in the schools.

Although it has great value to rural communities because it contains descriptions of the life and traditions of their ancestors contemporaries.

Therefore, Yaroslav Schevych, сontinuing the initiative “Karpilovka line” (//karpylivka.rv.ua), with help of the history teacher T. M. Stepanets, local school director V. V. Galushko and N. Y. Martynyuk, was able to deliver the manuscript to the Digital Country Company for the digitization. 

The newspaper “Yuzhny Kray” makes a special value of the Fund of book monuments of the Central Scientific Library of V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, which has the status of a national treasure. The newspaper was published since 1880 in Kharkov and is one of the most valuable sources for studying the history of culture and socio-economic development of Kharkov and Slobozhanshchina (Sloboda Ukraine). The publication is an invaluable information and documentary source for the study of the history of culture and socio-economic development of not only the Sloboda region of the XIX – early XX centuries, but also all of Ukraine.

The scanning of newspapers was done with using a professional large-format scanner, because the newspaper format was larger than A2. Given the age and condition of newspapers, wide-format scanning was performed with “gentle scanning” technology.

You can find digitized materials on the official site of the Central Scientific Library of V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University in the section eScriptorium. Archive of rare editions and manuscripts or by link: http://escriptorium.univer.kharkov.ua/handle/1237075002/3148

We are grateful to the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine for the allocated funds for the work on the project.

We invited to cooperation 300 institutions that deal with the preservation of historically and culturally significant documents and materials: libraries, museums, national cultural assets and archives.

During the period of the program, we have received 110 applications from 9 Ukrainian museums and libraries.

Together with the experts of the Committee of the archives protection and historians, we have established the order of priority of digitization – depending on the historical and cultural value and the level of damage caused by time.

The first grant from the Fund FUTURA is received by Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi Museum of Local History.

Series of the original manuscripts of the XIX century regarding the history of German and Swiss colonies of south of Bessarabia (18 documents total of 900 pages) will be transported to Kiev and digitized by our experts till the end of April.

Another 3 applications were received by grant department of “Digital Country”.

We hope that our experience in obtaining international grants will help in the near future to digitize materials that were filed by the following participants of the project:

• Oles Honchar Kherson Regional Universal Scientific Library

• Yaroslav Mudryi Scientific Library of the National Law University, Kharkiv

• Oleh Olzhych Zhytomyr regional universal scientific library

Thanks to all of participants! We would like to highlight that the “Digital Country” Company is open to cooperation with cultural institutions and outside the project as well.

Let’s preserve our history together!