Library launches web application for reading early modern texts

The University of Tartu Library has completed a web application called VUTT (Early Modern Texts Workbench), which for the first time enables digital searching and reading of the University of Tartu printing house heritage from the years 1632–1710.

The VUTT application currently contains more than 1,200 works printed by the university press during the Swedish period. The image of the original document is displayed alongside text that has been recognized and tagged by artificial intelligence. Users can perform searches, read texts, and contribute to improving transcriptions and annotations.

VUTT is largely based on the collection of copies of publications from Academia Gustaviana and Academia Gustavo-Carolina, which was created in the library in the 1990s as a result of many years of research. “Until now, these materials, which occupy several meters of shelving in our library’s reading room, were accessible only to those researchers who knew what to look for and where to find it,” said Meelis Friedenthal, Associate Professor of Intellectual History of the Baltic Sea Region at the Research Centre of the University of Tartu Library. “For the application, all these materials were digitized. A fine-tuned artificial intelligence model, Qwen3-VL, was then used; it was trained to read specific 17th-century typefaces, including Latin and French Antiqua, German Fraktur, and Greek type.” Friedenthal added that the same model was also used to automatically organize the archive: straighten skewed pages, identify the beginnings and ends of works, and recognize the text they contain.

The VUTT web application is available in Estonian and English and can now be used by all students, researchers, and interested users who need materials from the Swedish-period university printing house for study and research.