100 years of History in a 10-year-old University

Tove Ørsted Photo Archivist, Aalto University Archives

100 years of History in a 10-year-old University

Imagine if you could get a glimpse of how it was to be an art student in the very beginning of the last century, taking a break from ceramics class to glance through the window at the new railway station being built. Or if you could find the thesis of a technology student in Hietaniemi, who ran into a burning school after a Russian airstrike in 1939 to save teaching materials from the flames. Or what if you could meet one of the few female students in Töölö in the 1920's, who decides to take a degree in economics, while all her friends studied to become assistants.

Today Aalto University archives have digitized over 200,000 images to make the legacy of the University available to all. This was one of the goals in the mass digitization project between 2017-2019, which was conducted as a joint commitment between the Aalto University Archives, Library and IT services. The main aim was to digitize and make available over 50,000 master theses and dissertations from the schools of technology and economics over the last 60 years. Anyone can now find them, read them, and do searches in them from any Learning Centre computer and the images can be found from anywhere at aalto.finna.fi.

Project owner: Ossi Naukkarinen (RIS) • Project manager: Susanna Kokkinen (LSS) & Juha Juvonen (ITS) • Theses & Publication collections: Matti Yrjölä, Marja Malmgren, Miira Sarkki, Tove Ørsted & Titta Tuovinen • Image collections: Marika Sarvilahti, Tove Ørsted & Hanna Talasmäki