Center for Digital Humanities

On 15 July 2013 the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences signed the cooperation agreement encompassing the foundation of a center for digital humanities.

Computer-based processes and tools ("digital humanities") are becoming increasingly important also in the field of humanities and cultural studies, for example with regard to digital editions or quantitative text and data analysis. The new center will serve the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences to bundle their knowhow in this area and to establish cost-saving, highly efficient structures. The innovative concept of the new center will generate synergy effects and will be further expanded by cooperating with further partners.

The new center serves to achieve the following aims in particular:

• The development and implementation of open access models in cooperation with publishing houses and scholarly institutions
• The organisational set-up and networking of publication platforms in cooperation with scholarly institutions
• The project-oriented development of digital workflows from which also other potential partners will be enabled to benefit
• The development of models for the long-time archiving of data
• The realisation of retrospective digitization initiatives

Due to their long-term activities in the fields of digitization, electronic publishing and digital long-time archiving, the two cooperation partners have a wealth of experience, and have already been cooperating highly successfully in several scholarly projects. The "repertory of historical sources of medieval Germany", which already exists in the form of a digital online publication, is a showcase example. The Leibniz Supercomputing Centre of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences is furthermore a competent partner when it comes to setting up large infrastructures for the provision and long-term archiving of digital contents.