The manuscript collection of Juhani Siljo
The archive of Juhani Siljo contains:
- Correspondence
- Letters and postcards received by Edith Siljo
- Letters and postcards received by Miili Airila (née Siljo)
- Letters received by Juhani Siljo
- Letters and postcards received by Maria Sjögren
- Correspondence of other individuals (e.g., Elli Leiviskä)
- Diaries and notebooks
- Diaries, notebooks, and memorial books of Edith Siljo
- Manuscripts of Juhani Siljo
- Other materials
The manuscript collection of Juhani Siljo (1888-1918) includes drafts of poems, finished poems, and correspondence with acquaintances. But how does Juhani Siljo relate to the Ģֱ Library?
The Jyväskylä Seminary had been operating since 1863 and had its own library. Literature had been collected from here and there. But when talking or writing about the early stages of the Ģֱ Library's collection, the greatest book acquisition of all time always comes up: the stock of the bankrupt Minerva antiquarian bookstore, purchased in 1914, nine train carriages full of literature from five different centuries!
When the Minerva load arrived in the city, it was time to sort and process it. The work was done by the poet Juhani Siljo, who was the brother-in-law of lecturer Martti Airila. Airila, in turn, was the first part-time librarian of the library. Siljo worked as an assistant at the scientific library from 1915 to 1918.
In a report signed on October 6, 1916, Siljo states that he sorted the material into “the Fennica section, foreign literature to be preserved, foreign literature of questionable value, more valuable duplicates, and discarded items. ... Among them are ... literary quicksand, but there are also monumental publications.”
A description of Siljo's workday with the book collection has been preserved in Ain'Elisabet Pennanen's novel Kaksi raukkaa: "Elias (Juhani Siljo) constantly moved books from the basket on the floor across the middle of the floor to the standing bookcases. At the end of the aisle between the bookcases, through the open window, the large birch trunks and finely green tops of the seminary park could be seen."