(L-r): Emily Zheng, Univ. of Alberta Libraries' Publishing and Digitization Specialist; Oleksandr Pankieiev, ACE Research Communication Coordinator; Sonya Betz, Head, Univ. of Alberta Libraries' Publishing and Digital Production Service; Vita Yakovlyeva, Research Associate; and Michelle Brailey, Digital Initiatives Projects Librarian.
(Photo credit: Jessica Zychowicz/CIUS)
Last year, the focus of Dr. Oleksandr Pankieiev and Dr. Vita Yakovlyeva, co-coordinators of CIUS's Digital Archives Project, was on expanding the collections to include more recent publications. For instance, the selection of books was updated with several additions, the most recent being New Contributions to the History of the Ukrainian Language, published in 2016.
The audiovisual collection has also been significantly expanded. It now includes audio recordings of selected CIUS seminar series and its three annual lectures, as well as conferences and round tables. Of particular interest is the addition to the archives of the historic 1977 conference "Ukrainian Canadians, Multiculturalism, and Separatism: An Assessment" and the "Ukrainian Centenary Conference" of 1991, among others.
If you are not looking for anything specific, you can click on "Browse Collections" in the upper righthand corner bar menu, and prepare to discover something new, as some of our scholarly community members have done. Daria Polianska, then a doctoral candidate at the Univ. of Alberta's Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies, said, "The CIUS Digitial Archives Project was a useful resource for me while writing my dissertation. The materials are well systematized, easily searchable, and accessible. The website is user-friendly and helped me to save a lot of time. I am grateful to the CIUS team for this important work."
In the words of Serhy Yekelchyk, a professor of Slavic Studies and History at the Univ. of Victoria and president of the Canadian Association for Ukrainian Studies, "The CIUS Archives online is a treasure trove for researchers. Rare publications, research reports, and images available there documents the institute's distinguished contribution to Ukrainian studies in Canada and globally."