Matica srpska – Preserved for the Future

Tripont, as the region’s leading studio development and operating group of companies and the Eastern European centre of Phase One, installed object and book digitisation equipment for the Serbian national library, Matica srpska, and gave Phase One training to the library’s employees.

Matica srpska, the Serbian national library, one of the most important cultural institutions in Serbia since the middle of the 19th century, has purchased a Phase One camera system in order to preserve its analogue treasures and to be able to publish them digitally at an international level. Another scientific institution thus has the most modern cultural heritage digitisation technology known today.

The 195-year-old Matica srpska was founded in 1826 in Pest by the lawyer Jovan Hadzic, from donations by Serbian merchants. In its first years the Matica operated as a book publisher, and then, at the end of the 1830s, efforts were made to turn the institution into a learned society. After the 1848–1849 War of Independence the cultural centre of gravity of the Serbs became Novi Sad, so the question of moving the Matica from Pest arose, which took place in 1864. The Matica was moved to Novi Sad, and at the same time its scope of activity expanded and it also received a library function.

The Serbian national library holds the world’s largest collection of old and rare books. Since 1948 it has also had a collecting remit extending to legal deposit copies.

The library has more than 4,000,000 publications in Serbian and 109 other languages; it also maintains close relations with 320 international institutions and makes possible the lending of books and periodicals. The library’s headquarters has been in Vojvodina since 1948. It is the centre for world-renowned researchers who are highly cited in scientific journals. The library has seven reading rooms, which receive nearly 5,000 visitors a year.

The library provides a high-level service to all who are committed to the cause of science, and for this reason the Serbian national library has to satisfy numerous needs. The library’s holdings may be used by every adult Serbian or foreign citizen, on condition that they accept the library’s statutes. Matica srpska takes an active part in international cooperation; among other things it is a member of IFLA (International Federation of Libraries and Library Associations) and FID (International Federation for Documentation).

Within the library, the Publication Protection and Digital Department deals with the preservation and restoration of library and archival materials. The library established the Digitisation Department in order to make rare manuscripts, old books and periodicals digitally available to posterity by various procedures. Digitisation has been going on continuously in the institution since 2006. The digitised materials are selected according to the uniqueness, value, completeness and usability of the given volume. In digitisation, priority is given to the manuscript books of Matica srpska written in Cyrillic, to the publications listed in the catalogue of old and rare books, and to the library’s own publications. The library’s aim is to create as complete a digital archive as possible for the public.

The Digitisation Department of Matica srpska currently employs three people, who carried out the work with a Nikon D800 E. In line with the needs of the Matica srpska Library, the Digitisation Department plans to extend and modernise its digitisation work. For several reasons they decided in favour of the solutions used at the SASA Digitisation Centre and its Audiovisual Archives, which they supplemented with conservation and restoration tools and methods. This digitisation technology and procedure would make it possible to digitise and preserve the digitised materials faster and more simply, and moreover to exchange data, and in the long term this method would even establish the standard for the digitisation of cultural goods.

The Publication Protection and Digitisation Department of Matica srpska has purchased the Phase One IXG 100 camera system. In addition, for post-processing of adequate quality the library acquired the Capture One CH software, and it has added computers, a new reprographic table, digitisation stands, a book cradle, colour calibration targets, LED lighting panels, a light meter and a spectrometer.

This May the library’s digitisation staff took part in a Phase One training organised by Tripont, during which they learned the proper use of the device and the software. The Serbian state expects the institution to raise digitisation in the country to a higher level than before, and thanks to the efficiency and high quality of the Phase One camera system, the materials will not have to be digitised again.

Unfortunately the pandemic also affected the digitisation work, so the newly set-up workstations in the Digitisation Department of Matica srpska have not yet been put into operation. There is ongoing discussion about when this might happen. The collection of the Matica srpska Library is enormous, so they plan to begin the digitisation work by defining the main priority points. Great emphasis is placed on the quality of the captures; that is, the digitisation operators do not consider the quantity of captures important but regard the quality of the digitised material as their first priority. The digitisation work at Matica srpska will continue in the coming period as well.