Every day, Ukrainian libraries, archives and museums see the country's cultural heritage destroyed by Russian forces. To preserve these cultural treasures, Ukrainian cultural institutions urgently need support.
Saving Ukrainian cultural heritage
The international volunteer initiative SUCHO (Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online), founded a few months ago, works to preserve Ukrainian digital cultural heritage in the form of websites, online publications and databases of numerous cultural and educational institutions as well as other important civil society institutions in Ukraine.
This valuable treasure of digital cultural heritage is preserved and maintained by a large international group of librarians, researchers and technologists. In order to promote the digitisation of cultural heritage on the local territory, SUCHO volunteers are now focusing on coordinating the delivery of digitisation equipment such as scanners, cameras and computers to Ukrainian cultural institutions.
Digitisation equipment needed for Ukraine
SUCHO is working with NFDI4Culture and the National Library of Sweden to procure digitisation equipment. NFDI4Culture, the consortium for research rata on material and immaterial cultural heritage in the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) in Germany, is taking on coordination tasks. Institutions that need the equipment have to be matched with those institutions that are willing to donate them.
NFDI4Culture, in which TIB is also represented as a partner, comes into action in this process. The expertise available in the consortium is concentrated and a special helpdesk is provided, which brings together donating and those institutions in need, as well as offering technical advice and training.
Dr Maryna Nazarovets provides support as a communicative connector for enquiries and offers of help via the helpdesk. She is one of seven guest researchers at TIB who have come to Hannover since March 2022 as part of a scholarship programme for refugees from Ukraine. In Ukraine, Nazarovets worked at the Maksymovych Scientific Library, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. At TIB, she was initially a fellow in the Open Science Lab, meanwhile she is now working in NFDI4Culture.
For detailed information on the initiative to save Ukrainian cultural heritage, including its history and outlook, see Lozana Rossenova’s post on the TIB-Blog.
