One late summer Wednesday evening, an interviewer from Tallinn Central Library came to the courtyard of Kopli 93 to conduct a short interview with at least 5 people about the role of the library in people's lives. The librarian was conducting a survey of library users and non-users to develop library services through user-centered co-creation.
Among others, she interviewed a community member, Maie, and when asked the first question about the keywords Maie associates with the library, Maie replied - Grandma Alma.
It turned out that Maie's grandmother, Alma Pulst (Mühlbach), was a lifelong librarian at various libraries in Tallinn. Alma Pulst was named “Librarian of the Century” by the Estonian Librarians' Association. Alma's grandmother was the co-founder of the Tallinn Central Library Youth Library (now the Estonian Children's Literature Centre) and the Library of the Academy of Sciences (now the Academic Library of Tallinn University).
Maie's contact with her grandmother was short, as of Alma's two sons, Maie's father was the son who fled to Germany to escape World War II. Maie was born in Germany and only returned to Estonia after Estonia regained its independence.
However, Maie remembers her grandmother with warm words and says that it is her grandmother Alma who has influenced her. "Talk about people as if they were next to you", Maie has always tried to live by these words of wisdom.
For nearly eight years, Alma worked as deputy director of the library, serving three times as acting director for a total of four years. She was not confirmed as director because of her higher education and her lack of a Communist Party membership card. The case of his war refugee son certainly influenced his career. Alma's last job before retirement was at the Kalamaja Library in the northern part of Tallinn.
Maie joined Kopli 93 in the spring of 2023, when the gardening season started. Another coincidence happened while we were looking around Kopli 93 we found a German-Estonian business language textbook, edited by Maie Pulst. The dictionary was in use at the private university Studium, which operated at Kopli 93 from 1997 until 2011. The books were left among the rubbish from the university and have been waiting to be rediscovered in the dormant building for 12 years. A major clean-up, planned for the summer months, was postponed until the autumn, and this provided an opportunity to discover the connection between Maie and the books.
The Kopli community center is like a living organism, creating the necessary invisible links and inviting people into its courtyard who are connected to the dreams and visions for the future of this building.
what the archive is about
The Living Archive explores the potential of (post)industrial heritage to transform production in our cities. We collect stories with participatory heritage methods. The nodes for the local collection efforts are Fab City Hubs (FCH). The collection has been carefully assembled by FCH teams who have been learning about, co-creating and applying participatory heritage-making approaches, emotion networking methodology, oral history principles and creative perspective-taking. Select tags and categories to filter stories in the archive below. Explore their connections in the network graph.
