It is worth noting that the educational process at the National University “Yuri Kondratyuk Poltava Polytechnic” is always marked by a close connection with practice, real conditions of future professional activity and cooperation of scientists of specialized departments with stakeholders.
One of the leading employers of the Poltava Polytechnic in the training of specialists in the specialty 029 “Information, Librarianship and Archiving” has been the leading institution of the region in the field of archival affairs for many years – the State Archive of the Poltava Region, therefore traditionally scientists and students of the Department of the Ukrainian Studies, Culture and Documentation of the university hold practical classes and field practices on the basis of this state institution.
On June 5, 2023, as part of studying one of the basic academic disciplines “Archival Studies”, students of the first year of the specialty 029 “Information, Librarianship and Archiving” studying under the educational programs “Documentation and Information Activities” as well as “Information Analytics and PR Activities” jointly with Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor, Head of the Department of the Ukrainian Studies, Culture and Documentation Iryna Perederii visited the State Archive of the Poltava Region, where professional archivists gave them an interesting and meaningful lecture-excursion. Students got acquainted with the history of the archival institution, its modern organizational structure, had the opportunity to visit a number of departments and subdivisions as well as see first-hand how various types of archival activities are carried out, including those based on modern information technologies.
The leading researcher of the State Archive of the Poltava Region Viacheslav Serhiiovych Sushko, characterizing the SAPR funds and talking about the history of the regional archival institution, among other things, showed the students valuable archival documents of various types. Future specialists had the opportunity to see documents from the fund of the famous local historian, patroness, founder of the first publicly accessible private local history museum of the Left Bank of Ukraine (in Lubny) Kateryna Skarzhynska, samples of genealogical cases, for example, metric books (paper registers for official registration of acts of civil status – birth, marriage, death – of the pre-revolutionary period, conducted by the clergy at church parishes), as well as confessional information (accounting documents of the church administration, which recorded visits to confession by parishioners or the fact that they avoided this procedure). The archivists were also presented periodicals from different times – pre-revolutionary, during the period of German occupation, and Soviet periodicals, each group of which clearly reflects the character of its era.
Students inquired professionals of documents from the archive belonging to the unique category. Future specialists already know well from theoretical and practical classes what this category of documents is, how many of the total documents of the National Archive Fund belong to it, as well as the fact that all these documents must be subject to insurance copying and that digital copies and detailed information about them are presented on the website of the State Archival Service of Ukraine. Students also know that three such documents are kept in the State Archive of the Poltava Region. Viacheslav Serhiiovych detailed this information, talking about the storage conditions of such documents, the peculiarities of their presentation in archival projects exhibition.
The issue of informatisation of the archive’s work, the process of digitization of its funds, which in recent years has been noticeably dynamic, in particular, due to the active international cooperation of the entire archival industry of Ukraine led by State Archival Service of Ukraine (Ukrderzharkhiv), as well as each state archival institution in particular, was highlighted separately. Currently, the process has intensified, even in district and local archival institutions.
Directly at SAPR, these processes were significantly accelerated after the conclusion of a corresponding agreement with the American international non-profit genealogical foundation Family Search, which is engaged in the digitization of genealogical (more broadly, personalistic) documentary information all over the world with the subsequent provision of open access to digitized cultural heritage. The foundation's work has a global reach and is based on cooperation with more than 10,000 organizations in more than 100 countries.
In particular, the head of the State Archival Service of Ukraine Anatolii Khromov recently drew attention to the rapid dynamics of document digitization processes in SAPR on Facebook, proving on the example of this institution that the prospects for the full digitization of archival documents in state archives have become much more optimistic than it seemed a few years ago. Today, there are 6 powerful specialized scanners in the archive, most of which are provided to the institution for use by the foundation Family Search.
Viacheslav Serhiiovych Sushko drew attention to the peculiarities of preserving digitized documents, updated the issue of cyber protection, the wider use of cloud storage for the preservation of documents’ electronic copies, the realization in the near future of connecting SAPR to participation in the project “Interarchival Search Portal. A single window of access to digital resources of Ukrainian archives” already launched by the Ukrderzharkhiv (so far three central state archives have been included in the project), as well as the urgency of appropriate and universal software for automating the processes of storage and accounting of archival documentary heritage, in particular, digitized ones.
After that, students visited one of the many archives of SAPR, where they saw first-hand how archival documents are stored. They were accompanied to the archive repository and to several production locations of the archive by the head of the Document Storage and Accounting Department Liudmyla Ivanivna Cherednyk, who was repeatedly invited to the university to hold individual lectures on various disciplines, including “Archival Studies”. The specialist talked about ensuring light, temperature and humidity regimes in the archival storage, the processes of ensuring the proper sanitary condition of the storage premises, as well as their corresponding equipment, preventing the appearance of biological pests that can negatively affect the physical condition of documents and even lead to the aging or destruction of documents, damage to their material basis. This part of the lesson was also interactive – the archivist appealed to the already acquired knowledge of the students, and the young people actively discussed the issues raised.
The next stage of the visit to the archive led the students to the restoration workshop, where they saw not only special restoration machinery, but also how restorers work to perform certain tasks of saving, restoring or conserving archival documents. The students were fascinated by the thoroughness, even to a certain extent jewellery craftsmanship, which the restorers have to follow when carrying out the relevant works.
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The last location of the lecture-excursion was the document digitization department, where students saw this process and its technical support live. Professionals shared the features of digitization, scan copy processing, demonstrated samples of scanned documents on a computer screen, emphasizing that digital copies of archival document resources not only contribute to their longer-term preservation, but also make this heritage available to a wider range of real and potential users, make the process of working with them much more comfortable than it was before. After all, digitized documents can be accessible from anywhere in a 24/7 format, each document can be processed simultaneously by many users and, in addition, documents, physical condition of which makes it difficult to read them, in a digitized form allow one to eliminate this significant drawback, which makes work with such documents easier, for example, for researchers or other interested persons.
In general, the lecture-excursion was extremely fruitful, it was full of interesting, practically oriented material, which was emphasized by practicing archivists, and most importantly, students had the opportunity to immerse themselves in the real world of archives, to see first-hand how a number of areas of archival activity are implemented.
It should be recalled that the university previously presented an exhibition project about the first political emigrants and champions of independence of Ukraine, and Poltava museum workers presented students with a facsimile of a rare Gospel, published in Arabic at the expense of Hetman Ivan Mazepa.
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National University “Yuri Kondratyuk Poltava Polytechnic”
