The ser­vice is re­al­ized by Finnish soft­ware com­pa­ny Any­graaf Oy.

The eve’s eve of the Na­tion­al Vet­er­ans' Day on 25 April marks ex­act­ly one year from the open­ing of the Finnish Wartime Pho­to­graph Archive. Over the last year, this in­ter­na­tion­al­ly unique open in­for­ma­tion ser­vice has been vis­it­ed by over a mil­lion peo­ple from all over the world, re­sult­ing in a to­tal of over 31.3 mil­lion im­age down­loads.

The ser­vice up­date to be car­ried out on Na­tion­al Vet­er­ans' Day will make avail­able over 800 rare and his­tor­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant colour pho­tographs from the time of the Con­tin­u­a­tion War, in­clud­ing pho­tographs from the bomb­ing and oc­cu­pa­tion pa­rade of Vy­borg.

In ad­di­tion to the colour pho­tographs, the up­date will in­cor­po­rate the Na­tion­al De­fence Force’s digi­tised news videos from 1940–1944, host­ed in the Na­tion­al Au­dio­vi­su­al In­sti­tute’s on­line Elonet ser­vice, in­to the site’s search. The us­abil­i­ty of the site will al­so be im­proved; vis­i­tors will now be able to search and re­view con­tent or­gan­ised by themes, such as pho­tographs tak­en dur­ing key hol­i­days.

The new ma­te­ri­als to be added to the ser­vice as part of the up­date and the near­ly 160,000 black and white pho­tographs al­ready on dis­play are all free to down­load and use. The Finnish Wartime Pho­to­graph Archive will al­so be made avail­able through the finna.fi ser­vice as part of the Na­tion­al Dig­i­tal Li­brary project, which will fa­cil­i­tate the work of re­searchers, for ex­am­ple. Any­one vis­it­ing the ser­vice can leave feed­back on the pho­tographs in or­der to add back­ground in­for­ma­tion to the ma­te­ri­als.

The up­dat­ed Finnish Wartime Pho­to­graph Archive (www.sa-ku­va.fi) will open on Na­tion­al Vet­er­ans' Day on 27 April at 12 noon.