Manuscripts of Old Believers from the funds of the Pushkin House were digitized at ElarSkan

2024: Digitization of Old Believers manuscripts

On February 13, 2024, the company ELAR announced that the manuscripts of the Old Believers from the funds Pushkin House digitized on. ElarScan On the basis of the created digital copies, the Pushkin House of the Russian Academy of Sciences publishes scientific publications, which were told by Gleb Valentinovich Markelov - literary critic, archaeographer, researcher of monuments of ancient Russian literature, author of over 200 scientific papers.

source = ELAR

As reported, the funds of the V. I. Malyshev Ancient Storage Facility of the Pushkin House of the Russian Academy of Sciences contain more than 12 thousand manuscripts covering historical periods from the 12th to the 20th centuries. Work on digitization and publication of the most valuable of them has been going on for several years. In December 2023, the Pushkin House completed work on the book "Book Letter of Pomeranian Manuscripts of the 18th - 19th Centuries," and a few months earlier, the publication "Artistic Decoration of Pomeranian Manuscript Books of the 18th - 19th Centuries" was published. For both books, about 100 thousand pages of ancient manuscripts were digitized on the domestic planetary scanner ElarScan S2-800KS, as part of the scientific project "History of the Letter of European Civilization."

source = ELAR

"Book writing of Pomeranian manuscripts of the XVIII-XIX centuries." - this is a kind of atlas, the determinant of the handwriting of the Old Obradites, who from the end of the XVII century. created in the deaf Vygov forests the largest cultural and spiritual center, one of the most important things of which was the book description. In turn, the first book of this series - "Artistic decoration of Pomeranian manuscript books of the XVIII-XIX centuries." - is a reference apparatus and publication on ancient ornaments of Old Believer manuscripts for use in scientific work. The album consists of copies of manuscripts and the scientific part, history and detailed explanations, comments on the album. The work went on throughout the year - they selected the most unique copies, manuscripts with decorations, scanned, paying special attention to the correct color reproduction and preservation of geometry. I have been working in this area for 60 years and, of course, the capabilities of modern scanning equipment have taken our work to another level. If earlier you just had to take pictures from your hands, now the work is automated, the quality of copies is much higher, and the risks of damage to ancient originals during scanning are excluded. told Gleb Valentinovich Markelov

Another edition that was created on the basis of digital copies of Old Believer manuscripts and published by the Pushkin House is Vasily Zolotov. Degutsky chronicler. Chronograph, Syrian Chronicler of Courland-Lithuanian. "

source = ELAR

{{quote 'author
= told Gleb Valentinovich Markelov' Old Believers recorded events that took place in their area for 300 years, and the Degutsky chronicler is one of the samples of Old Believer writing. As you know, during the period of persecution, in the 17-19th centuries, Old Believers were forced to move to other lands and even outside the Russian Empire. Thus, they ended up, for example, in Lithuania, in a place called Degutsy. There the center of old order was formed, where there were their masters of writing - they wrote books and rewrote manuscripts. For almost 200-plus years, from the middle of the 17th to the middle of the 19th century, there was its own chronicle, weather records of events, descriptions of memorable personalities, and so on. The value of this chronicle is that it is not official, it was led by the people themselves, this is a description of events from the inside. These records have extraordinary value for both history and Russian literature.}}

source = ELAR

This chronicle has reached us in the list, but this list is author's, "the local figure Zolotov edited and recorded everything in his own way. Gleb Valentinovich comments that the annals reflect many interesting events through the eyes of local residents, for example, the arrival of Tsar Alexander the Great - he visited Degutsy, returning from the fronts in the war with Napoleon. Zolotov writes that Alexander the First treated the Old Believers very kindly and had a respectful attitude. Of particular interest is the history of the location of this manuscript in our time.

The first edition was published back in Soviet times, and the second - facsimile, based on high-quality digital copies obtained using the ElarSkan A2-800KS scanner - two years ago.

{{quote 'author
= Gleb Valentinovich remembered' We held a presentation of the book in the village of Degutsy, gathered a conference, invited researchers, the locals were very pleased and grateful. One of the main tasks of the publication of ancient manuscripts is, among other things, the facsimile publication of ancient manuscripts. To create them as the 21st century, we using the ElarScan scanner.}}

For February 2024, the Pushkin House has many orders for unique publications, work continues, and in the future it is possible to create a full-fledged electronic base so that even more researchers can get access to scientific materials. At the same time, within the framework of the Pushkin Digital project, Pushkin's works are digitized on the ELARobot scanner R-2 to create a multimedia encyclopedia of works by A.S. Pushkin.