In autumn 2022, our National Lottery Heritage Fund grant will come to an end. It enabled AI’s librarian Dr. Gagik Stepan-Sarkissian and archivist Dr. Sahika Erkonan to start much-needed work on our archives and library. This process began by organising the archive materials and ensuring that they are stored in archival boxes of professional quality. Thanks to the efforts and dedication of our colleagues, AI’s archives are now in a much better condition than before and are ready to be catalogued and digitised.
The most valuable archive owned by the Institute is that of Prof. Charles Dowsett, the first Calouste Gulbenkian professor of Armenian Studies at Oxford University, alongside historian Christopher Walker’s archive, another important collection for the Institute. In addition to AI’s eight original archives, we have recently received a generous donation from the Koundakjian family - the photographic archive of the prominent Armenian photojournalist Harry Koundakjian. Furthermore, thanks to the efforts of Dr. Erkonan, materials belonging to pianist Elena Kudian have now been separated from the Mischa Kudian archive, making it AI’s first archive dedicated to a female artist.
There has been significant interest in our archival materials, both from academics and the community, and we would very much like to make the collections as accessible as possible by digitising, cataloguing, and preparing finding aids. Dr. Stepan-Sarkissian and Dr. Erkonan are assisted by a group of fantastic volunteers, who are being trained to work on our archives.
We are launching this campaign to raise funds to enable our colleagues to continue their hard work on the preservation and cataloguing of AI’s archival collections. The funds we raise will be spent on organising, cataloguing, digitising, and bundling our archives. To preserve AI’s archival collections, it is crucial to take extra care of them by ensuring that the right tools, like acid-free materials, are used and safety issues are taken into account.
The Armenian Institute Team thanks you in advance for your continued support and encouragement of this vital work.
