The Lazić family counts six generations of librarians. The family collection is open for public consultation, which puts the material at great risk of deterioration. The digitisation of the Lazić family’s collection would allow researchers around the world to discover its contents, and would preserve the integrity of the material.
The Lazić family has been collecting a variety of documents for over a century: Serbian newspapers printed on Corfu and in Thessaloniki at the time of the First World War; copies of the Srpski zabavnik created by Serbian writers; Serbian press in France and England during First World War; the journal Pregled listova, published in Geneva only for the members of the Serbian government; journals published by the Serbian diaspora; Serbian periodicals created outside Europe; special publications printed by Serbs during the war and confiscated by the Serbian government. All of these are crucial for the study of the effects of the First World War in Serbia.
The materials are rare, and the extent of the collection cannot be found elsewhere in the world. However, due to the heavy usage of the material, it is now in dire need of preservation.
The project digitised 50,055 pages of documents. The project team was extensively trained in all aspects of digitisation, project management, metadata creation, and handling of fragile material. The project team trained members of staff at the university, who have continued the digitisation efforts around the collection after the closure of the project.
