Please join us for the next CuSPP Seminar in person (BPB W3.03) and online on Thursday, 28 March from 1-2pm. Please refer to the CuSPP email or email Wesley.Lim@anu.edu.au for the link.

Abstract: In the talk I will give a brief a presentation of our consortium project Digital History for Literature in Finland 1809-1917 (2022-2026) funded by the Academy of Finland. The goal of the project is to produce new information about 19^th century fiction in Finland by using digital methods and digital materials. As we know, no bibliography or presentation of literary history can be fully complete or transparent regarding the literature that was actually written, published and read in the past. In my talk I will focus on two intertwined areas that contribute to this gap between the past and the information we now have. First, I will sketch a history of how Finnish National Collection and National Bibliography was formed in the 19^th century and highlight how precarious this history was. Second, I will detail our method of retrieving previously unknown or omitted literature from Finnish National Bibliography database and point to the difficulties both with the bibliographic metadata and geographically and culturally diverse reality in the 19^th century Finland.

Dr. Veli-Matti Pynttäri is a researcher in the consortium project Digital History for Literature in Finland 1809-1917 (2022-2026) funded by the Academy of Finland, which consists of the Department of Literature at the University of Eastern Finland (PI Prof. Kati Launis), University of Turku Data Science (PI Prof. Leo Lahti) and the National Library (PI FT Osma Suominen). The goal of the project is to produce new information about Finnish 19^th century fiction by using digital methods and digital materials. Pynttäri has done his dissertation on the cultural critical production of T. Vaaskivi (1912-1942) and in his post-doctoral research he has done research on essay literature from the perspective of both literary genre and literary history. Currently, in addition to digital methods, he is particularly interested in questions related to reading, both in the modern world and in the history of books. He has also taught Finnish language and literature in high school, and for several years he has been an associate member of the Matriculation Examination Board. In 2018, he was a member of the Runeberg Award selection committee and the following year a member of the award committee. In 2022, he was the chairman of the selection board for the Finlandia Prize for fiction.