NSK treasures available to international audience as part of #ColorOurCollections social media festival
From 5 to 9 February 2024, the National and University Library in Zagreb (NSK) is again joining #ColorOurCollections, an international social media colouring festival organised by The New York Academy of Medicine Library.
Traditionally taking place on the first full week of February, the festival is a leisure-oriented appeal to an international audience for exploring the collections of museums, libraries, archives and other heritage institutions all across the world through a widely popular and relaxing form of entertainment – colouring.
The colouring book for all ages that NSK prepared for this year’s edition of the #ColorOurCollections campaign features resources available on the NSK Digital Collections website – 13 black-and-white prints from the NSK Print Collection, old maps from the NSK Map Collection, and other treasures from the Library’s collections – a woodcut from the 1522 edition of Judita, the landmark work of Croatian literature by Marko Marulić (Marcus Marulus), “the father of Croatian literature”, and a 16th-century etching from Machinae novae, the world’s first work including a detailed technical description of the parachute by Faust Vrančić (Faustus Verantius), both preserved in the NSK Manuscripts and Old Books Collection, as well as the illustration on the front page of the printed score of a part of Porin, by Vatroslav Lisinski, the author of the first Croatian operas, held by the NSK Music Collection.
Launched in 2016 and aimed at prompting the creative use of digital cultural heritage for amusement and educational purposes, the popular initiative has so far been joined by some hundred cultural institutions in the world and has brought into spotlight thousands of public domain works and national treasures preserved in their collections.
NSK’s colouring book from the #ColorOurCollections 2021 campaign and similar content is available on the NSK Colouring Books website.