Digitization of the medieval manuscripts from the collections Hdschr. and Mss.Diez. of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz (SBB)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Achim Bonte, since 9/2021
• Subject Area: German Medieval Studies (Medieval German Literature) ; Art History ; Medieval History
• Term: from 2019 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 428887617

The goal of the current project is the creation and up-to-date presentation of the images and metadata of 267 medieval manuscripts from the Berlin collections Hdschr. and Mss.Diez., amounting to a total of about 70,000 images. Both collections are of comparably high scientific significance, however their overall structure is quite different due to their historical origins. The Hdschr.-collection on the one hand comprises the post-war acquisitions of the Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz until 1997. Accordingly its codices cover a great variety of textual traditions, material characteristics and provenances. The Diez manuscript-collection on the other hand – being part of the 15,000 volume Bibliotheca Dieziana – is the physical result of the scientific philological interests of Heinrich Friedrich von Diez (1751-1817). Nevertheless both series represent a closed corpus each and moreover are already accessible through recent printed catalogues. Hence the project will make the manuscripts in question accessible to scientific research in the best possible combination of high resolution images and extensive metadata.Image digitization will be carried out by the digitization center of the SBB. Each item will be subject to an individual evaluation in order to determine the appropriate way of reproduction (scanner vs. photo-technology – different opening angles etc.). As a result more than 40,000 images will be produced using photographic equipment on a Grazer Buchtisch. The appropriate presentation as well as the long-term-reusability of the images and their metadata will be ensured by their integration into the SBB's presentation platform („Digitalisierte Sammlungen“). In this environment the project results will be presented in the public domain in accordance with the IIIF standard using persistent URLs.Within the project bibliographic and detailed structural metadata on the manuscripts will be captured within the IT-infrastructure of the SBB. In addition, this information will also be available in a specific national manuscript portal. On its completion this will be the Handschriftenportal. Until then Manuscripta Mediaevalia will serve as a central registry for digitized manuscripts. By the end of the project, all relevant descriptions will be available online in full text including references to the respective digitized objects.The realisation of the project as a whole as well as the particular sequence of work in the digitization center will be an issue of planning and management. Finally, both the results of the image digitization as well as the data-capturing will undergo thorough quality control.

• DFG Programme: Cataloguing and Digitisation (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)
• Ehemalige Antragstellerin: Barbara Schneider-Kempf, until 9/2021