The Writers Who Perished in the Genocide project is a digitization of volumes of literature in Western Armenian. On April 20th, American University of Armenia (AUA) Digital Library of Armenian Literature (Digilib) presented this new project and the website, digilab.am, where these works are available.
UNESCO classifies Western Armenian as an endangered language and projects like Digilib play a vital role in sustaining language and immortalizing the work of intellectuals who fell victim to the Armenian Genocide, said AUA President Armen Der Kiureghian.
Writers, scholars, historians and poets; works of about 40 writers who perished during the genocide are having their literary heritage immortalized one hundred years later. According to Meruzhan Karapetyan, lead researcher of the Armenian Digital Library, the works of well known writers and cultural figures as well as little known works in Western Armenian like those of journalist, writer, and educator Karekin Khajag who was arrested in 1915, are included in the digital library, which currently contains about 70 volumes of Western Armenian heritage in digital format.
As Karapetyan explains, pre-1915 Armenian literature was quite revolutionary, the writers came from various political backgrounds but had similar goals of establishing an independent Armenia along with defending the rights of their people. It was this characteristic of many young Armenian intellectuals 100 years ago that is portrayed in their work. Meruzhan Karapetyan pointed out that in modern day society, where technology has replaced many things and has brought convenience to our lives, it is essential that a useful resource like this is digitized and made conveniently available.
The project was made possible thanks to support from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
Operating since 1999, AUA Digital Library of Classical Armenian Literature has been established as a platform for the collection, digitization, preservation and presentation to worldwide audiences some of the enormous cultural wealth contained in the rich holdings of the Armenian national repositories all over the world.
