Description of the virtual project

A virtual project "Classics of world literature Yanka Kupala and Yakub Kolas: to the 130th anniversary" created on the Internet-portal of the National Library of Belarus is a special anniversary rubric dedicated to famous writers, founders of the new Belarusian literature and the modern Belarusian language.

The project provides an opportunity to get acquainted in detail with the biographies of folk writers, their literary legacy (sections “Yanka Kupala and Yakub Kolas: the chronicles of life and work”, "Yanka Kupala and Yakub Kolas: contemporaries, brothers-in-arms, people of the same age"), comparing the events of the same years in the life and work of both writers.

The works published in periodicals, as well as the first lifetime editions of their works (collections of poems and short stories, narrative poems, novels, plays, collections of works for children, books with translations, the first collected works, separate works, etc.) from the funds of the NLB are also available for users through remote access.

More than 100 editions of Yanka Kupala and Yakub Kolas were digitized for the project. It is about 30 thousand pages of text material which are presented in an electronic library and on the Internet-portal of the NLB (section "Reading Kupala and Kolas together").

Disclosed, digitized and put 4 audio records from Yanka Kupala’s and Yakub Kolas’s performances, 8 records of their works performed by well-known artists are set in the section "Listening to Kupala and Kolas". Audio records of 22 musical compositions based on the poems by Belarusian masters which differ by genre, content, subject-matter, performance manner are available in the section "Singing songs and romances based on the classics’ poems".

The writers’ collected works were republished more than once, and Belarusian book graphics considered it an honor to create original illustrations for each publication. So, the illustrations of 50 reputed artists were disclosed, digitized and presented (section "Gallery: artists-illustrators of the works of Kupala and Kolas") in order to demonstrate their variety in the literary heritage of Yanka Kupala and Yakub Kolas.

The section "Kupala and Kolas on the Internet" includes an article on information resources about the Belarusian literature in a global network and links to authoritative online resources with information on the life and work of Yanka Kupala and Yakub Kolas.

All materials are provided in three languages: Belarusian, Russian and English.

This virtual project is made by information-analitical, Internet portal maintenance and electronic library development divisions of the NLB.