The Encyclopedia of Brno History is fond of the history of associations and old maps, it is already the largest source of information about the city
Irena Loskotová, head of the creative team of the Brno encyclopedia, revealed the upcoming circuits on the broadcast of Czech Radio Brno. Next year, the database will celebrate its 20th anniversary as a public database, and last year it was able to obtain essential support from the city of Brno.
The Brno Town Hall will regularly contribute to the encyclopedia and has created the background in the Museum of the City of Brno, where the plan for the database was once created. “Thanks to this, we can fulfill our wish to create a new section of the encyclopedia,” says Loskotová. And those should be the history of Brno associations and also a close connection with maps, including historical ones. “If everything goes well, it will be this year,” he adds.
The authors will continue to work as volunteers. And they still refuse that a project appreciated by tens of thousands of visitors is also a carrier of advertising that would complicate its reading.
Brno Wikipedia? Not quite
The Brno encyclopedia currently has eighty thousand entries dedicated to personalities, streets, events, buildings, statues or commemorative plaques and schools. It is supplemented by a database of literature about Brno and at the moment twenty thousand photographs from the present and the history of Brno.
How and where can you listen to the program Guest of the Day in Moravia?
Live on the radio from Monday to Thursday at 5:30 p.m., but also online. All episodes are available as a downloadable podcast. You can find it at website of Czech Radio Brnoon the audio portal mujRazhlaswhich you can also install as an app, and also in all podcast apps.
For comparison, the Czech version of Wikipedia has a little over half a million of those passwords. Being called the Brno Wikipedia does not offend its creator. “But every project works differently,”. Even the Brno encyclopedia is made up of volunteers, but unlike Wikipedia, they come from the ranks of experts. They are historians, archivists and representatives of many other professions, including, for example, transport fans. And they were joined by the students of Masaryk University.
Everything depends on the excellent author team
It is interesting that no one left the creative team that laid the foundation for the encyclopedia more than twenty years ago. Everyone remained loyal to her, including historian Milena Flodrová (she still drives at the age of 88) or Miroslava Menšíková.
The excellent team is what Brno can envy elsewhere. Similar to Brno, a similar encyclopedia was created, for example, in Hodonín, Uherský HradištěJihlava, Ostrava av Pilsen. All these cities have their own encyclopedia built on the foundations and experiences of the one in Brno. And he still works with her.
On the contrary, there were also large cities that were willing to put up to millions of crowns into a similar project. However, they failed to get off the ground precisely because she did not find a team of enthusiasts similar to the one operating in Brno.