Eva Isaksson edited Section2.tex  over 9 years ago

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The Helsinki University Astronomical Observatory started operation in 1834. Its collections were older than that, as it had inherited astronomy collections from the Turku Academy, founded by Queen Christina of Sweden in 1640. After Finland became a Grand Duchy of Russia, the university was moved to Helsinki. A big part of the Academy library collections were lost in the Great Fire of Turku in 1817. Astronomy collections were safe as the fire never reached Observatory Hill.   The Observatory suffered no major upheavals in the its  175 years of operation (1834--2009) that followed. The library acquired quite extensive collections. The observatory was full of old instruments, manuscripts, separata, books, photographic plates, maps, exchange collections, reprints, staff publications, journals, ephemerides, and so on. When the emptying of the Observatory started in 2009, there were over 800 shelf meters of library and archival materials -- and maybe more, if one counts boxes found in the attic. Where did everything go? There were a few major outside takers. The oldest books (1600s--1830s) were deposited to the Finnish National Library, along with the 'separata' collected by the astronomy professors from late 1600s on. The University of Helsinki Central Archives took manuscripts. Books and journals already held by the Kumpula Campus Library were sent to the National Repository library in Kuopio. Other takers included the Tuorla observatory of University of Turku (Russian language books), Finnish Horological Museum (books and journals on clocks) and the Department of Physics (reprints of department of astronomy publications). For a more detailed description of the process, see \cite{2012wgl..conf...75I}.