Final event of the pan-European EODOPEN Project to be held at the University of Tartu Library

Today and tomorrow, the University of Tartu Library is hosting representatives from 15 libraries across 11 European countries who participated in the five-year international project EODOPEN. As part of this project, 15,000 works from the 20th and 21st centuries were digitized. The University of Tartu Library was one of the leading partners in the project, which concludes this October.

"The project, which is wrapping up in the coming weeks, was a great challenge for libraries. It started with finding suitable books and ended with adding the digitized works to the e-catalogue," said Liisi Lembinen, Director of Development at the library and one of the EODOPEN project leaders. "In between, there were issues like resolving copyright matters, signing contracts, digitizing, and many other tasks. Depending on the book, the entire process could take several months."

During the project, suggestions were collected from university students, professors, but also from not affiliated with the university. "We had some understanding of what study materials were needed, but all the recommendations were very valuable," said Elena Sipria-Mironov, the library’s project manager and EODOPEN leader, expressing her gratitude to everyone who submitted digitization suggestions. "We tried to fulfil the requests as much as possible. Many important study materials were digitized, but I'd especially highlight widely used textbooks such as Qualitative Research Methods, Guide to Estonian Butterflies, and Management: Theoretical Foundations."

Over the course of the project, more than 1,000 works and textbooks were digitized at the university library. All these are now available in the university's digital archive, DSpace, in the EODOPEN collection.