Kuidas iva idanema hakkas ehk juubelinäituse „Õpetusest võrsub iva. Eestikeelsest loengu konspektist kõrgkooliõpikuni“ sünnilugu

Näitus Tartu Ülikooli raamatukogus 30.01– 30.12.2025

Abstract

Origins of the jubilee exhibition “Teaching Creates Knowledge.
From Lecture Notes to Academic Textbooks in Estonian”

There was no surprise involved that the 500th Anniversary of the Estonian Book and Estonian literary language would be celebrated in 2025 in the format of a nationwide Year of the Estonian Book. No matter that came only 90 years after
the 400th Jubilee in 1935, as a few decades later substantive evidence was discovered in archives, confirming that the first book in Estonian was in fact printed ten years earlier than previously known, in 1525. I wish someday new founds would
make Estonian book even older.

In our exhibitions working group, established in 2019 by former director of the Library Krista Aru, the issue of the Jubilee exhibition was repeatedly discussed since at least 2023. Nobody favoured a general overview format, as it was taken for
granted that all the oldest and most precious relics would be brought out for the inquisitive eyes of the Estonian public without our input, from the vaults of other institutions. Finally, in March 2024, it was decided to stick with our “bread and butter” competency and concentrate on a retrospective of Estonian original educational books with an emphasis on university textbooks.

We started to “mobilise” from the ranks of our librarians the colleagues who had closer expertise in particular fields of knowledge and subjects to be able to evaluate and pick out the most worthy and important examples. However, it became apparent that our limited human resources – nobody could be excused from their daily duties -- were not fully
up to the task. Therefore, we involved professors and lecturers from all over our university to assist us with their expertise. We see their enthusiastic support we received as a clear sign of the community spirit in Tartu University, a recognition of the
irreplaceable place of our Library in the educational process and the continuously high value being placed in university textbooks in Estonian. As our exhibition was entered into the official program of the Year of the Estonian Book, we got some financial support from state bodies for the design of the exposition.

Our exposition had to fit into the physical and online spaces available and was thus cupped at approximately 1200 printed and around 1000 on-purpose digitized versions of selected books with some overlap. Hard choices had to be made all the way while compiling the exposition. Early on it was decided to leave aside translated textbooks and concentrate on books originally written in Estonian. It was quite painful, for example, to leave
out the works of the Tartu University’s professors of Baltic German origin written in German, as they played a major part in the history of education in Estonia. I would have liked to include portraits and brief CV-s of most noteworthy authors, first of all the pathfinders, but there was no room.

Lilian Mengel in her role of the Project Leader took great care of reaching out to the visitors. A printed fill-in workbook with quizzes was available to “cement” the knowledge obtained or recalled at the exhibition, there were puzzles to compose, a memory wall to write down a funny story from one’s student days and a mailbox to leave a letter to the favourite professor.

I am happy to note that our exhibition has received a positive and ongoing press coverage. Working on this exhibition confirmed my belief that textbooks in Estonian are among the highly significant building blocks of our country and nation as we know them today.