Project Rastko

The project Rastko - Digital Library of Serbian Culture ( Пројекат Растко - Електронска библиотека српске културе ) is a non-profit and non-governmental project for electronic publishing and promotion of Serbian and allied with Serbia Arts, Culture and Humanities. It is named after the Christian name of the Sava of Serbia.

The project was founded in 1997 as part of an inter-regional initiative. Its activities include:

• Electronic publication in the humanities work on Serbia and related areas
• Publishing results of scientific conferences and studies on the culture of the Balkans
• Bi -and multilateral cooperation with other countries of the Balkans and the world
• Development of regional centers
• Technical training

The virtual library of the project includes more than half a gigabyte of material such as e -books, photographs and comics. Most content is available in Serbian, English and Russian, a smaller part in French, German, Spanish and other languages. The offer ranges from texts of medieval manuscripts to contemporary science fiction literature. Offered are both public domain and copyright -loaded texts with the permission of the author.

The project is also the operator of the European branch of Distributed Proofreaders and delivers the Project Gutenberg public domain texts in European languages. It strives for a merger of digital libraries in Europe, with the goal of establishing a branch of Distributed Proofreaders in every country in Europe.

The Rastko project has the following regional centers (as of 2007 ):

The regional centers are independent and enable them to work in partnership with local people of academic, cultural and public life, in terms of minority protection. Planned are more regional centers Slovaks, Jews, Roma / Gypsies as well as over 29 other ethno-cultural minorities in South East Europe.