In 2014, Ukraine and the world community celebrate the 200th Anniversary of the great Ukrainian poet and artist Taras Shevchenko. This year is proclaimed the year of Taras Shevchenko by the resolution of UNESCO.

The creation of the science and education web-portal “Taras Shevchenko” took place on the occasion of this great date. An initiator of the Portal creation became the Minor Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. The Taras Shevchenko Institute of Literature of NAS of Ukraine, Taras Shevchenko National Museum, Institute of Telecommunications and Global Information Space of NAS of Ukraine, V. M. Hlushkov Institute of Cybernetics of NAS of Ukraine and National Technical University of Ukraine “Kyiv Polytechnic Institute” also worked under the web-portal creation.

Despite a big number of orders, resolutions of the government, missions oriented on the popularization of the literary and artistic heritage of Taras Shevchenko, by this time there have not been realized any project related to the reflection of the life and creative work of Taras Shevchenko in the largest informational space – the Internet.

The purpose of the web-portal creation is to acquaint the Ukrainian and world community with all the aspects of the life and creative work of Taras Shevchenko. Due to the scientific compound of the web-portal, all the users have a possibility to conduct their own researches, discuss the results and complete the web-portal exposition.

Except the basic parts of the web-portal, a number of services are realized. These services permit to work with the acquired database (knowledge), among which there is a map of places related to the life and creative work of Taras Shevchenko, to study the routes of his travels, read the manuscripts “in the original” and with the transcription of the texts, TimeLine and virtual tours to places related to the name of Taras Shevchenko.

In section “Multimedia” a user can watch thematic videos beginning from the times of silent cinema, TV programs, listen to songs on Taras Shevchenko’s verses, radio programs, audiobooks etc.

Each element of the content can be added in the personal cabinet to «Selected» where in the comfortable interface you can analyze, investigate, compare and compare video, audio, manuscripts, paintings and other materials which are situated and updated constantly on the web-portal creating a personal virtual scientific laboratory.

The artistic heritage of the artist by this time was not popularized in an appropriate way, and not all his admirers know that Taras Shevchenko was the first in the Russian empire who obtained a title of the academician of etching. The biggest part of the Taras Shevchenko’s paintings is stored in the Taras Shevchenko National Museum. This heritage was digitalized, and it can be seen in details in the web-portal section “Art heritage”.

On the web-portal there are some electronic copies of finished paintings and sketches, studies and outlines which give an opportunity for a researcher to analyze the changes in the creative mood of the artist, discover the new features of his creative character.

During the viewing of any picture the system automatically provides some additional information about an etching: name, year of finishing, place of creation, material, size, presence of author’s signatures and inscriptions, information about imprints and detailed descriptions. The possibilities of the system permit to combine different types of files connected logically between each other. Among these files there can be video or audio recordings, manuscripts, documents, scientific works and references to other additional information which will be immediately available to viewing.

A majority of author’s handwritten collected works and separate writings, letters, pictures, original documents which are stored in the department of handwritten funds and textual studies of the Institute of literature, are digitalized in high quality and are placed on the web-portal. Due to this, finally, the handwritten works of Taras Shevchenko became accessible for general use. Moreover, each handwritten text has textual transcripts, and it facilitates the study of the writings. For specialists in Shevchenko studies, scientists and admirers of work with the original texts there is a possibility to view the original work simultaneously with its transcript.

The viewing of the handwritten works, books and collections of the poemes is realized as an interactive book with a possibility to turn over pages.

A special feature of the web-portal is a big number of a visual illustrated material, in particular 3D excursions.

The 3D tours to places related to the name of Taras Shevchenko give a possibility to visitors of the web-portal to use a presence effect in museums, memorial buildings, reserves, memorial complexes, galleries etc.

TimeLine is a unique service created specially for the Shevchenko Portal. The uniqueness is a possibility to study the Shevchenko’s life like a time line, compare the facts of his biography, artistic heritage, historical facts and other factors that are time-referenced.

The period of paper maps is ended a long time ago. Everybody uses electronic maps, navigators, gps-receivers. It gives a unique possibility to look for information referenced to a certain location. The web-portal could not exist without any geographical service, because the Taras Shevchenko’s ways were paved not only on the territory of the modern Ukraine, but of the near foreign countries (Baltic countries, Russian Federation, Kazakhstan). The service “Interactive map” gives some information about the places of Taras Shevchenko stay, geographical places named after him, location of museums, buildings, parks, memorial complexes, monuments, memorial plaques and towns where his artistic and literary works were created.

The informational resources of the web-portal present a system of knowledge of the Kobzar’s cultural heritage. In its turn, the informational technologies permit to create a certain technological basis of modern knowledge systems support that is a base of the any scientific research process and education provision. In this case, it is necessary to provide a solution of a knowledge managing problem which is used in the activity of experts-analysts. Here, in our opinion, not only the accumulation of information array is important, but also a possibility to structure, systematize, construct and acquire knowledge in the base of certain means of semantic analysis of text-language arrays.

In the process of web-portal creation new approaches created by the necessity to form new knowledge integrating the net information arrays of different formats were created. A generalized formal representation of the ontology of the subject area was offered, which gave an opportunity to create a ranking of uncertain notions for the ontological description.

Thus, an ontological representation of the notion on the Shevchenko Portal has permitted to connect the categories of time and place with the facts and life events of Shevchenko from the new point of view.

The developers of the web-portal hope that the use of the contemporary communication and computer technologies which were used during its creation, will give broader possibilities for new discovering in the sphere of Shevchenko studies.

We invite you to the cooperation and completion of the material base on the web-portal.