It is always exciting (at least to me) to find interesting and unique uses of technology and digital archiving. This item certainly fits that definition. The Ukrainian Weekly brought this interesting story to our attention in their article, “Spiritual heritage documentation project identifies nearly 600 endangered churches.”
In Edmonton, Alberta, the Sanctuary: the Spiritual Heritage Documentation Project has documented nearly 600 endangered Ukrainian churches and their contents on the Canadian prairies. The team has been working on the digital asset management (DAM) system that will house the audio-visual materials at the University of Alberta Library’s Peel’s Prairie Provinces collection.
A sound file system component is under development with the audio records from research interviews from 2015 already indexed. The index employs the International Ethnographic Thesaurus for knowledge organization.
The Sanctuary Project has been working since 2009 across the Canadian prairies. Its aim is to photograph churches and their contents before they disappear due to demographic changes. The team also conducts research about ritual practice.
Melody K. Smith
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