A server room for preserving cultural heritage was created in the Archaeological Museum of Odesa

At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the team of the Odesa Archaeological Museum made a critical decision to close the main exhibition and move the artifacts to a safe place. This step allowed the museum to preserve the most valuable exhibits, and thanks to the support of the NGO Museum for Change, international partners such as UNESCO, Aliph, CER, and other donors, the museum received the necessary packaging materials and technical equipment for further digital transformation.

From the very first months of the war, active work began on the photographic documentation and digitalization of archival documents. From December 2023 to March 2024, with the support of UNESCO, a professional photographer carried out a large-scale photographic documentation of the collections. More than 20,000 artifacts were documented, which is one of the largest projects of its kind among Ukrainian museums.

System administrator Iryna Medved sets up the server. Photo: Oksana Hrytsiuta

The most intensive stage of work took place in 2024. Thanks to the new equipment that the museum received as part of the project, it was possible to scan 23,000 inventory passports of artifacts and more than 4,000 film negatives. The next stage was the implementation of a grant from CER: In the summer and fall of 2024, another 5,300 glass photographic negatives stored in the collections were digitized. In 2025, these works will continue in cooperation with Odesa universities.

"After implementing a number of digitalization projects, we have accumulated a large amount of digital materials. And they were usually stored on a large number of external drives, which can be dangerous. There was a problem with working with this data. So we decided to apply for a digitalization project from House of Europe. Our idea was to equip a server room," said project manager, acting head of the Department of Scientific Processing and Preservation of Collections Maria Lobanova.

Students of the I. Mechnikov National University of Kyiv at work digitizing. Photo: Oksana Hrytsiuta

A team of specialists was involved in the creation of the server room, who set up the equipment, integrated the server with computers and laptops in the museum, and provided system administration. This ensured the safe storage of digital copies of the collection, allowed the museum's structural units to work with the materials in a single space, and provided stable access to the data.

"We are very pleased that we managed to do this. A lot of digitized materials will be available, and this can help to inspire even more ideas," said Maria Lobanova.

Олеся Ланцман