Archives organised thanks to donation
Thomas Mautner’s visits to Uppsala University Library have been many over the years. Here he meets with archivist Kristina Lauridsen and division head Maria Berggren. Photo by Magnus Hjalmarsson
Uppsala University Library has large and valuable special collections, some dating back more than 400 years. Significant resources are needed to organise and catalogue all of these collections. A private gift of just over SEK 1 million from Thomas Mautner from Australia has helped to make this material more accessible to researchers and students.
“Thomas Mautner’s generous gift is extremely welcome, as it has enabled a person to work specifically on organising and cataloguing the collections for a period of time. This in turn has made the collections more findable and accessible for research and studies,” notes Maria Berggren, head of the Special Collections Division at Uppsala University Library.
“At the Library, the desire to receive material to preserve it for posterity has sometimes been outstripped by our capacity to manage it,” explains Maria Berggren. The material catalogued so far with the donation from Thomas Mautner includes the archives from two philosophers: Konrad Marc-Wogau and Andries Mac Leod, both with links to Uppsala.
Many visits from Canberra to Carolina
Thomas Mautner lives in Australia, but was born in the Czech Republic and grew up in Norway and Sweden. While he was a doctoral student in philosophy in Gothenburg in the 1960s, he decided to spend some time at an English-language university. This ended up being the Australian National University in Canberra in Australia, where he has remained ever since.
He became interested in philosopher Axel Hägerström early on, whose manuscript material was part of the Uppsala University Library’s collections. The documents were then typed up; a project that he eventually took over and then passed on. One of these manuscripts, on Greek religion, was more extensive and demanding than the others, and it became necessary for Thomas Mautner to learn a little Greek. Working on this project led to many visits from Canberra to Carolina during the 2010s. The clean copy was completed and published digitally a few years ago and his translation into English was submitted to the library in August this year.
Thinking about new projects
“Now I’m thinking about new projects. It’s so nice to be in a library that is well stocked with older literature. That’s something I do miss in Australia. I would like to contribute to preserving our fine cultural heritage; that is really worth supporting if you have the opportunity. My first thought was to give a donation for the purchase of books, but in our digital world, it felt more important to meet the great need to make more handwritten material accessible to a wider world,” says Mautner.
He has also had contact with the Department of Philosophy over a long period, where he gave a course on a few occasions, and his correspondence with philosopher Thorild Dahlquist at the same Department is preserved at the University Library.
Anneli Waara
New jubilee campaign promoting boundless knowledge
Uppsala University will celebrate 550 years on 7 October 2027. Ahead of this occasion, a jubilee campaign is being launched: “Boundless knowledge – since 1477”, whose aim is to further strengthen the University’s research. The goal is to raise SEK 1 billion by 2027.