Siberia Textual Heritage: Goals and Prospects of Scientific Attribution and Discourse Analysis in relation to Traditional Sources of Historical Information

The basis for the research was formed by two unique collections kept in the Scientific Library of Tomsk State University, i. e. Cell Library of traveling old believers that was presented to Tomsk University as a sign of respect to its researchers and a collection of Siberian publications of the Civil War period (1918–1922).

The research goal is to reconstruct sociocultural context for the formation of collections that include materials various both in their nature and content and to identify new ways of their representation considering source information potential and demands of the modern scientific community.

The project members aim at seeing it as a part of a particular historically formed collection of written and printed texts. The most prominent theoretical result of the project will include developed methods for reconstruction and study of Siberia information space and cultural environment.

Moreover, researchers will get access to unique collections, both confessional (Cell Library) and political-ideological (publications of the Civil War period).

Collections will help to create problem and topic-based digital resources describing aspects of Siberia sociocultural landscape formation, daily city and countryside life in eastern Russia during the Civil War.

The project has already given rise to online resources "Cultural Landscapes of the Siberian Taiga" and "Virtual Worlds of Siberian Periodicals". In December 2015, Tomsk State University and the British Library started publishing digital copies and scientific descriptions of liturgic manuscripts of the Cell Library.