Folios are going digital

Scholars from the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, in collaboration with Polish colleagues, have begun a unique project to digitalize unique library collections. The practical work of scanning, archiving, and copying to disks has started in the magnificent Ossolineum of the Stefanyk Reference Library of the NASU in Lviv. State-of-the-art equipment has been installed, and experts are working double shifts because they have to process almost 35,000 folios. The director of the library, the professor and historian Myroslav Romaniuk, says that the realization of the joint Ukrainian-Polish project will make it possible for scholars and students to exchange international data and access similar collections elsewhere in the world. The project optimizes the process of familiarizing library patrons with unique texts and illustrations; at workstations in the library a search program allows users to find what they are looking for in a matter of seconds.