Tomsk State University: TSU’s 144th anniversary celebration
The Book’s Dozen
The main event was the intellectual book and design festival ‘The Book’s Dozen’. It was organized by TSU, the Siberian branch of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, and an independent publishing house Makushin Media. Thirty Russian publishing houses presented nearly 30 tons of books for the festival.
“Tomsk State University’s birthday always becomes an event for the city and its residents. It is an intellectual event connected both with professional interests of the University and its educational mission. It’s important for every person to have books that influence their growth, and this concept is behind the festival ‘The Book’s Dozen’”, said Eduard Galazhinskiy, TSU Rector.
This year TSU’s birthday brought together publishers, journalists, editors, designers, and other people from all over Russia who make books happen. Tomsk residents and visitors had an opportunity to visit open lectures and discussions. The participants discussed the art of printing and book preservation and discovered how to publish books on science, art, and even e-sports and videogames. Recordings will be published on the TSU website during the summer.
Back to the Future
A TSU cyberclass hosted a series of small tournaments for games of the 2000s, where gamers could return to the past and experience nostalgia. First places were taken by: CS1.6. – Anton Gubar and Evgeniy Lyamichev, WarCraft 3 – Vitaliy Zaripov, and QUAKE 3 – Aleksey Surabashev.
Championship on text recognition of 19th century Siberian newspapers
On May 28, TSU Research Library and the PRO Siberia platform held the first championship on text recognition of 19th century Siberian newspapers. The participants had an hour to correct mistakes in automatically-recognized text. Collectively, they helped digitize 83,639 characters of text from old Siberian newspapers. This number is a considerable contribution to the already existing corpora recognized by volunteers of PRO Siberia platform (2 million characters). Among the participants were people of various professions and ages: students, university lecturers, pensioners, a physicist, a housewife, a teacher, and a graphic designer. They were brought together by their interest in history, specifically local history, and old newspapers.
To win the championship, the participants had to correctly recognize the largest amount of text and type the largest number of symbols in an hour.
1st place – Roman Grekhnev, 9,751 characters, online participant
2nd place – Natalia Zhilyakova, 8,486 characters, on-site participant
3rd place – Nikita Kudryashov, 7,361 characters, online participant
Fantastic Plastic Exhibition
Besides lectures, tournaments, and a market, TSU hosted an exhibition for products and art installations made of recycled plastic. SIBUR and Moscow Design Museum, the organizers, say that their goal is to explain the possibilities of recycling and inspire people to reuse plastic.
Ceremonial Academic Council
The deputy governor of the region and the rector of TSU congratulated the university and awarded some of the members of TSU’s staff.
Imperial University Cup
Hundreds of students, Tomsk residents, and visitors came to the celebratory outdoors concert. The music was loud and the spirits were high, thanks to the students of the Faculty of Arts and Culture, members of the TSU Rock Club, and Tomsk DJs.
The concert was also the finale of the annual Imperial University Cup. This year, the cup was taken home by the students of the Institute of Economics and Management. The winners received a certificate for 65,000 rubles, the Imperial University Cup, and a lot of positive emotions.
A Walk through Latin America
International students from Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, El Salvador, Chile, and Peru gave their own present to the university. Students from TSU, joined by their friends from SibMed and TPU, had organized an event so that everyone could get to know the culture of Latin America better.