Cultural Heritage in the Virtual Environment
Innovations and significance of the project Creation of the Integrated Virtual Information System
This has been the first project to join diverse memory institutions for the achievement of a common goal providing as widespread access to cultural heritage as possible to all users in Lithuania and worldwide. In 2005 Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania received a 13.3 million Lt support from the European Union structural funds under Measure 3 of Priority 3 of the Single Programming Document for the realization of this project. On September 1, 2005, the implementation was started by the National Library together with the partners the Lithuanian Art Museum and the Lithuanian Archives Department.
The project innovations have made an impact on:
Cultural policy of Lithuania. The project goals have called for political solutions. A Concept for Lithuanian Cultural Heritage Digitization adopted by the Government of Lithuania in 2005 has launched a new paradigm for collaboration between memory institutions in this country;
Methodology for collaboration between archives, libraries and museums based on common standards for metadata archiving and preservation, digital objects and access;
Technological solutions that ensure integrity of Lithuanian cultural heritage, user-friendly services, flexibility and safe long-time preservation within the integrated virtual system with a common portal;
Content of the digital cultural heritage. Rich and diverse digital cultural heritage content has been created, providing for full expression of national culture in the global community of nations.
The key economic and social aspects of these innovations:
A databank for digital cultural heritage content from archives, libraries and museums, accessible online to national and worldwide users via the common portal http://www.epaveldas.lt, has been established. The implemented systems and the established databank have simplified and broadened access to national historical materials, art, folk art and published documentary heritage for national and worldwide users;
The established public sector services that are useful for a large part of the Lithuanian population have been updated and improved. As a result, quality of electronic public sector services has increased;
Access to cultural heritage content digitized by libraries, archives and museums has been enhanced and improved; there is access to catalogues, and a mechanism for digital document retrieval has been introduced;
Unrestricted and free access to the virtual library information system ensuring equal opportunities for all user categories.
Content of the digital heritage
The established databank of the created virtual cultural heritage system now contains over 3, 000,000 pages of old books, newspapers, art works, manuscripts and church registers. Part of them have been made accessible online. In the short term, the remaining part of the digitized works and publications will be associated with descriptive metadata and made accessible to users.
Printed and manuscript heritage
The databank of printed and manuscript heritage contains old Lithuanian books (1547-1863); documents from the press ban period (1864-1904); books in Latin published in Lithuania in the 16th-18th c.; books in Polish published in Lithuania; Lithuanian periodicals prior to 1940 (List of periodicals available on this portal) art exhibition catalogues; legislative acts and other official documents of the Republic of Lithuania; manuscripts and archival documents reflecting Lithuanian social or communal identity: parchments, the collection of the Synod of the Evangelical Reformed Church of Lithuania (manuscript originals of documents from 1413-1938, transcripts in clerical Slavic, Polish, Latin, German and Russian); the archive of the Lithuanian Art Museum; a collection of historical acts of Lithuania Minor, etc.
Art
16th-20th c. painting, pastel watercolour painting, graphic art of the 16th-20th c., foreign graphic art from the 16th-20th c., historical photography, a collection of sphragistics, 16th-20th c. textile art, traditional painting, traditional carving, drawings, traditional weavings.
Archives
The Lithuanian Archives Department’s decision to digitize Roman Catholic Church registers of birth, marriage and death (1599-1907) preserved at the Lithuanian State Historical Archive has been caused by their deteriorating state and the increased usage rates. 705 complete volumes of registers tracing as far back as the 16th c. from 22 churches across Lithuania with the total number of pages 240, 901 have been selected for digitization.
Documents belonging to churches from Žemaitija, Aukštaitija, Dzūkija and Suvalkija regions reflect local idiosyncracies of surnames and geographical names. The virtual library contains registers of Jieznas, Smilgiai, Krakiai, Naujoji Žagarė, Joniškis, Kriūkai, Onuškis, Skapiškis, Pakruojis, Seda, Telšiai, Kernavė, Musninkai, Kražiai, Merkinė, Tytuvėnai, Šiluva, Švėkšna, Vilnius, Naujasis Daugėliškis, Tirkšliai Roman Catholic churches. From Vilnius, registers of St. John the Baptist (Šv. Jono Krikštytojo) and St. John the Baptist and St. John the Apostle and Evangelist (Šv. Jono Krikštytojo ir Šv. Jono Apaštalo ir Evangelisto) churches are presented in the virtual library.
