Preparing “The Messenger” To Go Online: Digitally preserving Avedaper and other rare publications of an Istanbul missionary press (EAP1355)

This project will digitise a collection of works produced and distributed by the Istanbul publishing department of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) between 1857 and 1933. The publications include Armenian and Armeno-Turkish editions of the newspaper Avedaper ("the Messenger") as well as Armenian, Armeno-Turkish, Ottoman Turkish, Greek, and Greco-Turkish books and tracts. These works (many in the endangered Western Armenian dialect) are vital records of Turkey's Armenian population in the late Ottoman era, especially the Protestant segment, mostly lost in WWI and about which few written traces remain. Besides preserving these crucial sources, digitisation will allow them to be made available via the Internet for study and research worldwide.

Music: "Karcığar Ud taksim” by Ehl-i Keyif is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.