The Literary Institute hosted colleagues from the James Joyce Centre
The Director of the James Joyce Centre Darina Gallagher and Research Assistant Dr. Josh Q. Newman visited the Literary Institute from February 7-14 to learn more about the unique features of the Under and Tuglas House Museum and the Institute’s research opportunities.
The visit took place as part of an Erasmus+ short-term mobility project, which aims to improve digitization competences, facilitate the accessibility and usability of collections, reach a wider audience through online platforms, enable an exciting museum experience for all people, expand the circle of cooperation partners and present the project results internationally. The project hopes to significantly improve the digitization knowledge and skills of memory institutions in order to present the literary and cultural history of 20th century Europe in a broader and more inclusive way.
During the visit, the staff of the Literary Institute Museum introduced the cultural collections stored and exhibited here, their importance in the Estonian and European cultural landscape, and the uniqueness of the authentically preserved home of the writers. In addition to exploring the house museum and collections, the guests were able to participate in an educational program conducted with students and museum excursions, including a guided tour adapted for visitors with intellectual disabilities.
Dr. Josh Q. Newman also had the opportunity to observe the traditional research seminar of the Department of Modern Literature of the Literary Institute, where junior researcher-doctoral student Jaanus Valk introduced his doctoral thesis and research topics. In addition, they jointly visited the three writers’ museums of the Tallinn Literary Center, where director Maarja Vaino and assistant director Tiina Lipp povided a comprehensive guided tour as well as coffee and cake.
The main outputs of the mobility project are the improvement of digitization competences and the simplification of the accessibility and usability of the collections. The cultural collections of the Literary Institute have been digitized to a large extent and are accessible remotely. They can be viewed in the Museum Information System, the Literary Institute’s website, as well as through websites like Ajapaik and Etera.
Digitization work has been carried out at the Literary Institute’s museum since 2015, both through institutional development programs (ASTRA), and with the support of the Research Collections Project of the Ministry of Education and Research and various projects of the National Archives, the Estonian National Museum and the Cultural Endowment of Estonia. Approximately 80 percent of the 53,000 items in the Literary Institute’s collections have been digitized to date.
As part of the visit, Senior Researcher Elle-Mari Talivee and Conservation Specialist Iris Eelmaa introduced the Literary Institute’s digitization processes, current and planned projects, the development of databases and the importance of remote usability and accessibility of collections in research. As a result of the training day, the understanding of the digitization opportunities and bottlenecks of Estonian memory institutions improved significantly.
In the adjacent photo, Elle-Mari Talivee demonstrates how the search for, description of, and condition assessment of archives was carried out before the introduction of digital databases.
In the next phase of joint activities planned during the Erasmus+ short-term mobility project, experts managing and using the cultural collections of the Literary Institute Museum, the James Joyce Centre and the Petöf Literary Museum will meet in Dublin in April to exchange professional knowledge and skills.
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