Structural method of researching and prresenting sources (on the example of the letters of musicians of 1942-1943)

Research interest to archival documents as sources of historical information continues to be relevant. Effective search for documents and their use depend on the choice of search characteristics (SC) used for their description. Until now, there was no significant shift in the technology for their description, query formulation and search for the information, even when the sources were published. It seems reasonable to expand the existing set of SCs with the characteristics that present the content of the source in more detail and can be illustrated by excerpts from the text. SCs should be correlated with a certain system, in the analyzed case with musical culture. For example, a detailed formalized semantic analysis of natural texts presented in the works of Ovchinnikov is usually used for texts processing. However, it does not answer the purpose of representing source texts. Narrative documents are characterized by a great variety of semantic and structural units. It is the task of a researcher to divide the entire source text into informational mini-messages and text fragments (TF) that can potentially generate interest and to formulate SCs. Those SCs should also be presented in the form of a system for organizing search space. That is why, the author's version of the technique is called structural thematic-system analysis and synthesis. Method of application of structural analysis technique is shown on the example of the letters from the Ukrainian composers Dankevich, Liatoshynsky, and the singer Patorzhinsky to the composer Meytus. Chronological framework of those letters was June 20, 1942 -May 3, 1943. They are deposited in the Kirivograd Museum of Musical Culture named after K. Shimanovsky. Structural elements (SE) singled out from the texts can be grouped into the following SCs: events of personal life; events of professional life (participation in professional organizations); events of creative life (creation, performance of music pieces); events of correspondence; evaluation (of music pieces, people, performance); emotional attitude to events, music pieces, people. Those SCs can be linked to dates, periods of time (for example, the period of the Great Patriotic War). A person can be linked to a certain time period and geographical area. The author's version of structuring full-text documents gives answers to the questions raised by the time. It helps to introduce sources in academic use, as well as in informational use.