Digital Archive for an Azerbaijani Ashiq Poet

Task

Ashiq Shamshir is among the best-known figures of twentieth-century Azerbaijani ashiq poetry. Material about him, from poems to photographs and published books, existed in scattered form. For a body of work, scattered is the same as hard to find.

What we did

• Built a site that gathers the material about him in one place.
• Gave his life and work, the poems, the e-books dedicated to him and photographs collected from archives their own sections.
• Built a music section where each recording plays or downloads from a paginated, searchable list.
• Listed the poems alphabetically, with a search field.
• Kept the audio player running as a visitor moves between sections.
• Shaped the structure around the material rather than a template.

Result

Poems, recordings, e-books and photographs of Ashiq Shamshir sit in one public archive that a reader, a student or a researcher can reach.