Date: 13.03.2014
“Postcard as a Historical Document” is an Interregional workshop organized by the Library that was held on March, 13th in the Library’s Hall on Kuznetsky Most.
The target of the workshop was to present the function of a postcard as of a historical document taking into account not only the visual information on the image side of it but also the epistolary text on the back side.
The workshop was attended by postcard collectors and the specialists from Russian State Library, Russian State Art Library, Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, Moscow Kremlin, State Tretyakov Gallery, Polytechnical Museum, Arkhangelskoye Memorial Estate, State Darwin Museum of Moscow, Nekrasov Central Universal Scientific Library, State History Museum of Saint-Petersburg, Military-Historical Museum of Artillery, Engineer and Signal Corps (Saint-Petersburg) and others.
The presentations aroused much interest among the participants whose numerous follow-up questions covered the basic subject of the workshop and a wider range of topics including the study of postcards as a historical resource and the problem of preserving particular collections.
There were presentations that sought much attention, among them are the following:
- “Postcard albums from the archive of Sergey Aleksandrovich Romanov: the history of a collection” by Anna Rodionova, Senior Research Associate, Manuscript Department, RSAL;
- “The First World War reflected by a postcard” by Anna Larina, postcard collector, Art Edition Department, RSAL;
- “Postcard at a historical exhibition, based on the display of the State History Museum of Saint-Petersburg” by Irina Karpenko, Academic Secretary of the State History Museum of Saint-Petersburg;
- “German addresses of the old Russia. History shown by postcards” by Arsen Melitonyan, deltiologist;
The presentation “Entertaining observation” made by the artist and deltiologist Natalia Krasnushkina was greeted with especial animation.
At the end the workshop was followed by presentation of a documentary animation film “Greetings from Moscow” made by Savva Kulish NETSKI Film Studio Development in 2002 with Arsen Melitonyan starring as a postman. The creative approach of using postcards shown in the film demonstrated that there were much wide possibilities to expose and publish such kind of historical documents.
As a result the participants wished to dedicate one of the forthcoming workshops to the questions of terminology in the field of postcard study and to further produce a universal glossary of deltiology terms in order to unify the definitions and make it easier for the specialists to cooperate.
The workshop demonstrated postcard as a historical document, showing how topical and multidimensional it was and required further exploration and expanding in various aspects starting from terminology to the use of postcards in exhibition activity. The participants expressed their expectations for the Library to continue the research in the field uniting the specialists and giving way not only to exchange the opinions but also to elaborate relevant scientific and methodological solutions connected with a wider exploration and description of a postcard.
