The Munich Digitisation Centre (MDZ) handles the digitisation and online publication of the cultural heritage preserved by the Bavarian State Library and by other institutions. It provides one of the largest and fastest growing digital collections in Germany.
The Digital Collections reflect the traditional special collection fields of the library: History, Classical Antiquity, Eastern Europe, Musicology. It comprises manuscripts, early prints, modern books, maps and photographic collections as well as journals and newspapers.
The Thesaurus Professionum now contains about 23.000 entries for occupational titles found in Early Modern funeral sermons and similar texts in German libraries and archives.
Illustration: Amman, Jost, Sachs, Hans: Eygentliche Beschreibung aller Stände auff Erden, hoher und nidriger, geistlicher und weltlicher, aller Künsten, Handwercken und Händeln …
Durch d. weitberümpten Hans Sachsen gantz fleissig beschrieben u. in teutsche Reimen gefasset, Frankfurt am Mayn: Feyerabend 1568
thanks to http://www.digitalis.uni-koeln.de/
The transliteration of characters from non-Latin scripts differs from target language to target language and from purpose to purpose (literal/phonetic). The encoding of special characters that are used in these transliterations does as well.
The online-converter 2cyr.com now provides a tool for the automatic transliteration of languages written in Kyrillic to Latin script and vice versa. It is also possible to use an individually created transliteration for special needs.
For the lack of a common one-to-one encoding of characters within one transliteration system the machine-based conversion of bibliographic data is difficult. Nevertheless 2cyr.com is a useful instrument and with the help of a screen keyboard it is possible to make requests to Unicode-based library catalogues, bibliographical databases, search engines in general and paste the received information to the own reference management software.
individuelle Anpassung der Umschrift für jedes einzelne Zeichen
Eulogies, which were written and published on the occasion of birthdays, baptism, wedding, inauguration, anniversaries or death, form a unique biographic source. Printed funeral sermons for aristocrats, citizens and dignitaries were very popular in the Protestant cultural area between 1550 and 1750. They usually contain names, dates, places, relatives, life histories, and sometimes also information about the following generations.
The Research Centre for Personnel Writings at the Philipps University Marburg has made this source accessible for online-use by providing bibliographical data such as: names of the deceased, the widows and the preachers, place names, dates of funerals and the publication of the sermon, etc.
Picture: Title page of the funeral sermon for Samuel Sultze from Naumburg, Title Page Catalogue of Funural Sermons and other Personal Writings of the University Library Wroclaw/Breslau, Sign. 421542
Litlink: preview to version 3.0
As the quantity of software for managing bibliographical references and information increased during the past years the range of products makes it necessary to define criteria for choosing one or the other. These criteria are for example the variety of import and export file formats, citation styles, options to manage many different information in a complex software structure, usability, database connectivity, good net binding, and last but not least independence from the Internet.
Individual needs play a substantial role in the choice of a software. Therefore it is important to figure them out clearly and to test different programs. The free software “Litlink” has been developed especially for the requirements of historians. It combines facilities for managing bibliographical references relating them to articles, reviews, photographs etc with those ones that are necessary to administerate archival materials and references. Litlink is a multi-dimensional slip box that offers almost unlimited linkage possibilities.
The collection mapping project Handbuch der historischen Buchbestände in Deutschland, Österreich und Europa (Fabian 1992, 1997) is now available on b2i, a research portal for the subjects of library, book and information sciences. The handbook provides information about libraries and collections mainly in Germany and Austria , furthermore in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, Great Britain und Ireland. It is planned to extend the coverage to Switzerland and South Tyrol.
Historical adress books are a very important reference for the sciences of regional, social and economic history as well as for the genealogy. Increasingly libraries and archives make this source accessible for the online use. For example the adress books Poznań which one can research in the Digital Library of Wielkopolska. The time-frame runs from the Prussian provincial capital Poznań (Adress- und Geschäfts- Handbuch der Stadt Posen 1879) to the voivodship capital Poznań during the Second Polish Republic (Księga adresowa dla handlu-przemysłu stoł. M. Poznania 1936/37).
Furthermore one can use the volumes, that one can retrieve in the catalogues of the Berlin State Library or the Herder-Institut Marburg as well as the 1835 Posen City Directory (Polish-Roots).
Current results in scientific research are particularly published and discussed in journals and anthologies.
Online catalogs of libraries very often do not contain bibliographical references to articles. The latter can be found in databases related to specific fields of research.
These databases mostly are not available online, but Litdok provided by the Herder-Institut Marburg is. Litdok contains bibliographical references to articles on the history of East Central Europe. A user interface
with the possibility to choose between ten languages and multilingual subject headings offer a comfortable search for literature in different languages.
The local press is an important resource for the research in genealogy, sociology, economy and regional history in general. Valuable information can be found in notifications of civil registry offices, recruiting announcements of the armed forces, advertisements, letters to the editor etc. The “Zeitschriftendatenbank” (ZDB) is the largest database worldwide for the reference of periodicals. It contains more than 1,1 Mio. titles of journals in several languages published in the time from 1500 until today. Together with the titles the “ZDB” provides information of evidence for approximately 4300 mainly German libraries. The search screen is a very user-friendly one and allows queries according to country and area where the journal was published or spread.
Weblogs are en vogue nowadays - choosing a nickname one turns to the broad public of the
world wide web. Those people who spend a lot of time in libraries and archives are very often unsuccessfully in their search for refreshment. But may be there are also bright spots you would like to recommend to others. In our Weblog => Leserhunger we would like to place at the disposal of hungry readers a platform for the exchange of experiences and for improving the offers of snacks in the library and archive environment. Please, send your restaurant critics in one of the languages of our webpage and a photograph to leserhunger@archivauskunft.de.
