Digitization and Cataloguing of 18th century prints in Germany (VD 18) in the holdings of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz - Main phase

• Applicant: Barbara Schneider-Kempf
• Subject Area: History of Science
• Term: from 2014 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 262031625

The Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin ¿ Preußischer Kulturbesitz holds a substantial and important collection of 18th century books. In addition to many foreign publications the majority are books published in German or printed in German-speaking countries including extremely rare items. Therefore, the library already took part in the pilot phase of the VD 18 which aims to build a retrospective German national bibliography for the 18th century. The results of this first phase, 14.000 digitized books, are available via an OAI-interface and may be used via the VD 18 portal, the ZVDD (the central collection of digitized books) and the library¿s own digital collections. As the available books form only a fragment of the holdings, the library plans to digitize and catalogue a further 4.800 books in the proposed first main phase starting with monographic materials. The digitization of the equally important and numerous journal holdings will take place in a later phase.The VD 18 guidelines for cataloguing and digitization are applied in all steps of the project workflow. Especially before cataloguing in the GBV Common Library Network extended research takes place in other catalogue networks to avoid duplicates. In addition to national bibliographic cataloguing, the Staatsbibliothek is recording specifics of single copies (e.g. provenances or bindings). Thus, the activities of the VD 18 are fully integrated in the library¿s work for its historical collections.

• DFG Programme: Cataloguing and Digitisation (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)