This document discusses steps towards developing an Armenological internet portal called "Armeniaca" in Armenian libraries. It outlines 5 specific goals for the portal's development, including developing strategic partnerships, providing high-value collections and services to users, establishing an educational portal, implementing advanced infrastructure, and ensuring sustainability. The document also discusses challenges in digitizing Armenian content and making it accessible online, such as presenting content in non-Latin scripts, developing multilingual metadata, and including Armenian resources in large European digital libraries and databases.

1. STEPS TOWARDS DEVELOPING
ARMENOLOGICAL INTERNET PORTAL
“ARMENIACA” IN ARMENIAN LIBRARIES
Tigran Zargaryan
National Library of Armenia

2. STEPS TOWARDS DEVELOPING
ARMENOLOGICAL INTERNET PORTAL
“ARMENIACA” IN ARMENIAN LIBRARIES
First Armenian book , “The Friday
Book”, was published in Venice in 1512
by Jacob the sinful .

During 1512-1513 Jacob published 4
more books.

500 anniversary of Armenian book
printing was celebrated in 2012 .


3. STEPS TOWARDS DEVELOPING
ARMENOLOGICAL INTERNET PORTAL
“ARMENIACA” IN ARMENIAN LIBRARIES
The first Armenian periodical “Azdarar”
(“The Heralds” ) was published in 1794 in
Madras, by Father Shmavonyan.

How many Armenian book titles were
published during past 500 years?.

Paper based versions of the union
catalogues of periodicals are outdated.


4. STEPS TOWARDS DEVELOPING
ARMENOLOGICAL INTERNET PORTAL
“ARMENIACA” IN ARMENIAN LIBRARIES
Digitization is a key for solving many of
accumulated problems having relation to eContent and also is a solution for long term
preservation of written heritage.

To develop the “Armeniaca” portal National
Library of Armenia is working towards 5
specific goals.


5. STEPS TOWARDS DEVELOPING
ARMENOLOGICAL INTERNET PORTAL
“ARMENIACA” IN ARMENIAN LIBRARIES
1. Develop strategic partnerships across the libraries
sphere, and build stronger relationships with
Armenological centers.
2. Provide end users with collections and services of
high value in a flexible and effective way by also
providing librarians with the necessary systems
based on advancements in information science
and librarianship.

6. STEPS TOWARDS DEVELOPING
ARMENOLOGICAL INTERNET PORTAL
“ARMENIACA” IN ARMENIAN LIBRARIES
3. Establish scientific educational portal
“Armeniaca” and embed “The Armeniaca” Library
services within international research and learning
communities.
4. Implement a first-class infrastructure that
continues to innovate, based on broadband data
transfer network between libraries, GRID
technologies and cloud computing capabilities.

7. STEPS TOWARDS DEVELOPING
ARMENOLOGICAL INTERNET PORTAL
“ARMENIACA” IN ARMENIAN LIBRARIES
5. Ensure sustainability of “The Armeniaca”
Library by building long term partnerships with
libraries, Armenological centers, State agencies,
and donors.

8. Priority 1: Develop strategic
partnerships
Armenian Libraries Union catalogue . More
than 800,000 bibliographic records in
Armenian, Cyrillic and Latin scripts.

Union catalogue of Armenian periodicals.
About 1,080 bibliographic entries are
created. Holdings data for the NLA and the
FSL are being catalogued.

Creation of the bibliographic database
“Armenian Book” is in process


9. Priority 1: Develop strategic
partnerships
About 1 million digitized pages (academic
books, academic journals, rare and early
printed Armenian books) are in the National
Academy of Sciences Open Access
domain, under the “Creative Commons”
license agreement.

Digitization is done by NLA and FSL and
these materials are freely available to the
users to read and to download.


10. e-Content for Armenia.
Current state
In Armenian Wikipedia currently 78,000
articles are present (for the English
Wikipedia this number is 4,300,000).

“Wikimedia Armenia” Foundation through
various projects is encouraging the growth,
development and distribution of
encyclopedic e-Content.

Libraries can support Foundation for
adding Content.


11. e-Content for Armenia.
How to enrich it?
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Digitization is the challenge of the 21st
century . And Armenian libraries should
be amongst the leaders for digitizing of
“Written Heritage” and making that
content available to all.

12. e-Content for Armenia.
How to enrich it?
●
4 most fatal digitization myths are:
– Digitization
does not need government
attention
– Digitization is cheap to do and does not
cost a lot.
– You do it once and that is it.
– A whole library can be digitized easily.

13. e-Content for Armenia. How to enrich it?
Myth 1: Digitization does not need government
attention .
●
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
Three decisions of Armenian Government
will help to bypass the “Myth 1”.
“Developing Armenian Libraries union
catalogue”. Approval date: 29 Nov., 2012
“Exalting documents, and including them in
the National Library Collection. Approval
date: 10 Jan., 2013

“Organization and Coordination of the
digital version of the Armenian script
library”. Approval date: 4 Feb., 2013

14. e-Content for Armenia. How to enrich it?
Myth 2: Digitization is cheap to do and does not
cost a lot
●
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It is cheap if just photos of the pages are
taken. In this case the image quality is low,
the photographing speed is slow.
Professional digitizing equipment costs
between 50,000 – 60,000 USD.
During one shot the image is passing
several processes: cropping, adjustment,
sequential numbering, saving in TIFF
format, etc.
Trained staff should be involved in this.

15. e-Content for Armenia. How to enrich it?
Myth 3: You do it once and that is it.
●
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For each digitized material relevant metadata
must be provided (in MARC21, or in Doublin
Core etc formats).
If possible, digitized copies should pass OCR
All solutions (machine readable data
exchange, data export/import protocols, data
search, retrieval and mining etc) must be
based on ISO approved standards in
Information Science, Computer Science,
Library Science.

16. e-Content for Armenia. How to enrich it?
Myth 4: A whole library can be digitized.
●


Collections of the National Library of Armenia
consist of:
Several million newspaper pages
4 million book titles (280 million pages???)

17. e-Content for Armenia. How to enrich it?
Problems to be solved
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
Presenting multilingual content (non Latin
scripts) on the Web.
Developing multilingual authority records,
multilingual subject heading, geo. locations.
Organizing multilingual search
Preparing indexes of named entities
Developing ‘nice looking’ Web Based
UNICODE fonts for Armenian content
Producing content for mobile devices.

18. e-Content for Armenia. How to enrich it?
Tasks to be done
●
Including Armenian e-Contnet in European
networks, such as:
–
–
–
–
–
–
The Europeana
The European Library (TEL)
Europeana Newspapers
Directory of Open Access Books
Directory of Open Access Journals
Promoting multilingualism for International
Standard Name Identifiers (ISO 27729).

19. ●
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ISNI: 0000 0001 0001 8559
Name: Armenian S.S.R. Erevan State University
Armenian S.S.R. Erevani Petakan Hamalsaran
Armenian S.S.R. Petakan Hamalsaran
Armenian S.S.R. State University
Dānishgāh-i Dawlatī-i Yirivān
EGU
Erevan State University
Erevani Hamalsaran
Erevani Petakan Hamalsaran
Erevani Pethamalsaran
Erevanskiĭ gosudarstvennyĭ universitet
Erevanskij Gosudarstvennyj Universitet 1991 Erewani Petakan Hamalsaran
Gosudarstvennyj Universitet Erevan, 1991 Kratikon Panepistēmion tou Erevan
Staatliche Universität Jerewan
State University Erevan, 1991 Uniwersytet Państwowy w Erewaniu

20. e-Content for Armenia. How to enrich it?
Armenian content in HathiTrust
●
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Number of digitized Armenian titles - 9,155
Number of digitized Armenian titles in public
domain – 2,063
Veratsnutʻ iwn Hayastani / gretsʻ V. Pōttō;
ṛ userēnitsʻ tʻ argmanetsʻ P.P.
by Potto, V. A. 1836-1911.
Published 1904
●

22. ‫. »»)رهس لل~لهله«»‬
‫‪Conversion by HathiTrust to the plain‬‬
‫.‪text which is in Arabic‬‬
‫سعيه صهره .‬
‫جست-سد ععط«ل م سرهق٠هع ةيط .ل~رع ميهق ، ة-هبي قجعرق‬
‫حس ططل-ص ءهلب ، مهم-ه-ع يعمل-ج هلم-تا‬
‫اؤسس ، هول~ءسلم سطل-هلسع اهلمح-تا همته-هم هلقعرل~حلهل~عروق‬
‫وس ط-هه س عاق . سجل سل ط هعمم بهسء طلي-بهره‬
‫ةرهسجعع،٠ ة اههععول~.- قعجتههل~وسع وو . س٠هلعبهمءه» سجلي‬
‫لمظس مم-هلنمرل~. ءهلب سديه طم،سهعسع ههمرهلم٠سعول هلم ا‬
‫هسر ط٠ل ءصوته عرج٠ة هعملله صول منه ظءهقج سرهل~.. عل~هل~.ل~ر‬
‫. مللم بله همها تجه٠هسههليجع بله وتهسعبم٠ ط جمله. ساسرسر»هليرج‬
‫هلةع٠س ل ققه«. هس-ل تهلهسعس ةجهعهم٠. وسع«.«‬
‫»سه هاس-سناج «سهتهسري هسسسح فقهله لرس‬
‫.»ل~»ه-قسل~. هلسجج همس-و‬
‫هلن- و«ل-به٠ ا هسو ملي صومنال~هليه مم»سملمحل~عرب‬
‫وقال«ل~. همسهبهي .ل~اع«٠هلللي‬
‫ه٠ م سا-يهوه . اهعطل~( هلي ته-رقته ممهوتنعسسل~.‬

23. e-Content for Armenia. How to enrich it?
Armenian content in HathiTrust
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Main Author: Lamennais, Félicité Robert de,
1782-1854.
Other Authors: Achemean, M.
Language(s): Armenian
Published: K. Pōlis : Tpagrutʻiwn Kʻirishchean
Ew Ěnk, 1870.
Series: Azgayin Zhoghovrdakan Matenadarn
Subjects: Authority. Liberty. Freedom of
religion.
Physical Description: 144 p. ; 17 cm.

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26. e-Content for Armenia.
How to enrich it?
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Bloggosphere. Is this an e-Content for
enriching?
Wikimedia. What about the archival
copies (mandatory copy for the National
Library of Armenia?).
Social networks. How we should
evaluate this content?
New domain name .հայ is in a process of
discussions. Will Armenian script domain
names help to enrich the e-Content?

27. e-Content for Armenia.
How to enrich it?
Granish - Open community of writers, critics,
publishers and translators. Born digital literary
content is produced. http://granish.org/
●
Archiving Internet (am zone). Who is in
charge?
●
Most of Armenian newspapers besides paper
versions are producing e-versions as well. Who
is in charge for preserving the archival copies?
●
News agencies producing born digital content.
7or.am, blog.7or.am, a1plus.am etc
●

28. e-Content for Armenia. How to enrich it?
Thank you.