The responsibility for the cultural heritage

Pentti Hauhiala, who has devoted almost his entire life to collecting Disney-related media and objects, donated his collection of thousands of Disney books, magazines, videos, records and other items to the National Library. Estimated as the largest of its kind in Finland, the Disney Collection was named after Pentti Hauhiala.

The National Library showcased an exhibition based on the donated collection, entitled Disney Collecting as a Passion, from 21 October 2010 to 31 January 2011. Heikki Kaukoranta, who retired from the National Library a few years ago, curated the exhibition in cooperation with the staff responsible for the National Library’s cultural activities.

Other donations

In February the Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE donated from its sheet music resources a collection of compositional manuscripts important for Finnish cultural history that have been accumulating since 1927. This collection will be included in the National Library’s Manuscript Collection.

Also added to the Manuscript Collection were compositional manuscripts, arrangements, audiovisual material and photographs related to Finnish military music, which were donated by retired Captain (mus.) Jukka Vuolio, who has studied the history of the Guards’ Band.  

The University of Helsinki Observatory Library transferred to the National Library the old book collection and the Separata collection (offprints from 1600 to 1900 sent to astronomy professors) of the Academy of Turku Observatory.

Cultural activities

The cultural events of the National Library reached new audiences, particularly young visitors.

The eclectic and diverse exhibition What Could Kill the Book? (27 May–31 December 2010) considered the future of books. The rich programme associated with it included events planned by the students of the upper secondary schools of Vaskivuori and the Herttoniemi Coeducational School under the supervision of their mother tongue teachers.

The exhibition (15 January–1 April 2010) of the comics artist Tiina Pystynen, who received the annual Puupäähattu Award granted to a comics artist, was organised together with the Finnish Comics Society, while the exhibition (8 April–8 May 2010) on Estonian literature, entitled Best-Designed Estonian Books 2009, was arranged in cooperation with the National Library of Estonia. The Finest Finnish Books 2009 exhibition (17 May–22 September 2010) was a collaboration with the Finnish Book Arts Committee.

Two exhibitions were organised with the Finnish Literature Society: The New Reading Culture in the Finland of the 1700s (12 May–4 September 2010), which was associated with the international SHARP conference, and the 175^th anniversary exhibition on the Kalevala epic, entitled The Kalevala in Many Forms (25 March–25 September 2010). The banner exhibition Eikonopoiia. Ancient Greek Written Sources (20 October–31 December 2010) was related to the Symposium on Digital Imaging of Ancient Textual Heritage, held at the end of October.

The travelling exhibitions Finland Through the Ages, Music as a Homeland – Fredrik Pacius 200 Years and Finnish Behind the Borders toured Estonia and various regions of Finland.   

Cultural projects

The Save a Book campaign received a new fundraising permit, which will be valid until May 2012. The funds raised have been used to establish the Aarteet (Treasures) library, which grew this year by 300 digitised titles, increasing the total number of titles to 533.

The National Library continued to cooperate with the University of Helsinki in the design of Kirjallisuuspankki (Literature bank), an online service on literary fiction.

 The digitisation of Latin- and Swedish-language dissertations from the Royal Academy of Turku continued with support from the Ilkka and Ulla Paatero Fund. Conservation and digitisation were completed in early 2010, and the material was made publicly available through the Doria database in May.

A new project was launched in October to develop music archives with funding from the Anu Karessuo Fund, while the Eero Niinikoski Fund supported the digitisation and conservation of the National Library’s copies of the Missale Aboense,, the first publication printed (in 1488) specifically for Finland.

Research projects

The Collected Works of Jean Sibelius project produced two new works in 2010: Symphony No 7 and two versions of Cassazione. The series is published by the National Library, the Sibelius Society of Finland and the publishing house Breitkopf & Härtel, and included 16 volumes at the end of 2010.

The project for the conservation and publication of mediaeval parchment fragments succeeded in conserving the entire collection of 9,300 parchment documents and digitising most of them. Supported by the Helsingin Sanomat Foundation, the project is related to the research project led by Dr Tuomas Heikkilä which sheds light on the origins, development and effects of our country’s earliest literary culture.

With support from the University of Helsinki, the project concerning the history of the National Library of Finland produced a Swedish-language manuscript which was submitted to the publishers, i.e., the Finnish Literature Society and the Society of Swedish Literature in Finland. The manuscript will be published in early 2012.

The Disney Collection of Pentti Hauhiala includes the catalogue of the Wer ist Carl Barks exhibition. Authored by Gottfried Helnwein, this German publication from 1993 contains an interview with Carl Barks.

Photo: National Library of Finland / Kari Timonen