Digital libraries: The Bavarian State Library boasts half a million digitized books and manuscripts

In early March 2011 the Bavarian State Library (die Bayerische Staatsbibliothek), the largest supplier of electronic resources in German language to the Europeana project, announced it had reached a half a million mark in digitization of books and manuscripts from its collections. The Bavarian State Library offers free access to more than 500 000 digitized books available via library’s OPACplus e-catalogue and its digital collections. It means that the Bavarian library’s digital collection has become the largest one in Germany.

The Bavarian State Library founded in 1558 by Duke Albert V, is one of the most significant universal libraries in Europe, and besides, it is the international scientific library in the world. Its holdings feature over 10 million books, at least 57 500 current periodicals, both printed and electronic, and 93 600 manuscripts, what makes it one of the world’s most important scientific centers.  

In 2007 the Bavarian State Library teamed up with Google to launch a project for digitization of copyright-free books from the library’s holdings. This project enabled the library to digitize editions spanning 17th – late 19th cc., including first editions by Goethe, Schiller, Kleist, which were previously accessible only at the library, and make them freely available all over the world.

The Munich Digitization Center (das Münchener Digitalisierungszentrum) also makes contribution to the extension of the library’s e-collection. The center is an institution dedicated to digitization, online publication and archival preservation of cultural treasures of the Bavarian State Library. The center digitizes special collections, valuable manuscripts, incunabula and rare old editions. Due to the innovative scanning technology, implemented at the center, digital collections now also feature a major medieval German romance by the poet Wolfram von Eschenbach “Parzival”, “The Gutenberg Bible”, an epic German poem “The Nibelungenlied” (“The Song of the Nibelungs”), as well as letters by Adalbert Stifter.

The Bavarian State Library will continually contribute its electronic copies to Europeana, and later the database of the German Digital Library (Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, DDB).

The Director General of the Bavarian State Library Rolf Griebel mentioned that “almost 90% of all electronic texts, contributed by Germany to Europeana have been digitized by the Bavarian State Library”. The library anticipates that in 2014 it will reach the mark of 1 million digitized editions.