An international academic conference titled "Non nova, sed novae. Photographs and postcards in libraries, archives, museums and private collections” is the fifth event devoted to special collections. Photographs and post cards are a rarely presented type of library, museum and archival resources. Containing various pieces of information, they require multidisciplinary knowledge to be studied and constitute some kind of a testimony, preservation, or evidence. During this year conference, we would like to focus on the views on these two types of materials.

The phrase "Non nova, sed novae" that is ‘not new things but in a new way’, seems quintessential for the meaning of preserving and copying images by means of photographs and post cards. Thus, an image of a known person, thing, view become not an individual item but, through the use of particular techniques, a popular, multiplied, distributed one. They turn into elements of correspondence, exchange of thoughts and feelings, memory, and finally got included in legacies, collections or become trade items.

The event will be held on November 13-15th, 2024. We invite librarians, museologists, archivists, historians and cultural experts, restorers, academics conducting research on photographies and post cards as sources of knowledge from various disciplines as well as collectors and all those photographs and post cards lovers, for whom they are something more than just pictures, for both active and passive participation. The aim of the event will not only be a wide interdisciplinary discussion on the history of such collections, their production, gathering, edition, storage and sharing, but also an attempt to define their current status in the era of global digitalisation, when a photo can be taken almost everywhere by anyone by means of a smartphone, e-post cards are sent and electronic communicators are omnipresent.

Accompanying events will include shows presenting photographs and post cards from the collections of the Museum of Photography in Krakow and the private collection of the Foundation of Collections of Sosenko Family.