World history: German-Polish project aims to save cultural heritage of Pomerania

Librarians from Szczecin (Poland) and the University of Greifswald (Germany) have concentrated their efforts in order to preserve old historical newspapers of Pomerania. October 10 - 14 2011, in Greifswald is running a workshop which has brought together the staff members of Pomeranian State Library and the University of Greifswald library. Participants of the workshop will discuss the first results of joint activities and further steps for digitization of newspapers of Pomerania.

About 500 titles of Pomeranian newspapers - over 20 000 volumes – at present are disseminated across various institutions of Poland and Germany. All in all there are 3 million pages of the cultural heritage of Pomerania. Historical periodicals, including regional daily newspapers with supplements, directories, newsletters, span the time between 18th – 20th centuries.

The purpose of the joint project is to bring together disseminated collections of Pomeranian newspapers on German-Polish Internet portal. Only close and coordinated cooperation will make it possible to convert periodicals into digital format and save them on microfilms, preserve their content and prevent deterioration of original editions.

In September 2011 a joint workshop was launched in Szczecin. Librarians from Poland presented their regional newspaper collections and conducted a presentation of digitized periodicals in West-Pomeranian Digital Library “Pomerania”.

At present joint working sessions participants need to work out ways for data exchange between various systems of catalogues, prepare a plan of actions for digitization of newspapers at local newspaper holdings and their virtual unification on the bilingual Internet portal. This digitization project will help libraries to fill in the gaps which appeared in newspaper collections within the past century.