Press archive

According to most recent findings, the Bavarian State Library’s broadside of globe gores by Martin Waldseemüller (BSB call number Mapp. I,5 ua) is not an authentic print but a copy, probably produced before 1960, of the document in possession of the University of Minnesota. This is the conclusion based on the results of a thorough materials science examination conducted by the Bavarian State Library’s Institute of Conservation and Restoration. The print, thus far dated from the year 1507, is one of only six known copies. The Waldseemüller map is famous for being the first to use the name "America".

Historians and everybody interested in regional history can use the research platform "recensio.regio – Rezensionsplattform für die Landesgeschichte" (review platform for regional history) as of now. At the address www.recensio-regio.net, the portal offers access to reviews of regional-historical specialist journals, constituting a primary point of access for information on recent publications about regional history in the German language. The reviews of the cooperating journals are available to the users in full-text search mode. The platform can be accessed freely and free of charge.

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek receives the personal papers of Anna Wimschneider (1919 – 1993) as a donation from the community of heirs, i.a. the handwritten manuscript of her autobiographic novel "Herbstmilch" ("Autumn Milk").

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek acquires an extensive collection of partisan prints, predominantly from the region of today's Slovenia. The library thus complements its holdings by adding first-class sources on the South-East European and German history during the Second World War.

On 27/09/2017, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (BSB) hands back 67 titles formerly owned by the "Association of Catholic religious education teachers at the institutions of higher education in Bavaria" to its successor organisation, the "Association of Catholic religious education teachers at the grammar schools in Bavaria" (Verband der katholischen Religionslehrer und Religionslehrerinnen an den Gymnasien in Bayern e. V., KRGB).

From 20 September 2017 to 7 January 2018, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek presents the book as an autonomous work of art, forming the center of its exhibition "SHOWCASE – Artists' books from the collection of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek". The exhibition illustrates impressively the enormous differences between the artists' approaches to using the book as a form of expression. The works on display reach from the historical avant-gardes of the 20th century to conceptual artists' books of the 1960s and 1970s, and up to the present.

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek returns 56 unlawfully acquired books from its holdings to two institutions and one individual, thus facing up to its responsibility.

Over 1.9 million digitized volumes, the largest fleet of scanners of all German cultural institutions, innovation projects such as the image-based similarity search, the newspaper portal digiPress, apps, 3D digitization, new presentation systems for digital contents, cooperation projects with Google, the Stanford University Libraries or the Fraunhofer Society and much more mark the digitization strategy of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich. The library now celebrates the 20th anniversary of its Munich Digitization Center (MDZ). Founded in 1997 in the form of a digitization division of the library with the financial support of the German Research Foundation, today the MDZ is the central library institution for developing, testing and launching new, innovative products, services and processes in the broad field of the "digital library".

Within the framework of a ceremonial act on 19 June 2017, the Free State of Bavaria restituted 44 manuscripts, map works and files from the holdings of the state archive of Nuremberg and of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek to the descendants of the Munich Orientalist Prof. Karl Süßheim. The family had been dispossessed of the works in the time of the Third Reich.

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek expands its digital services again, launching its newspaper portal digiPress. digiPress is the technical platform for the presentation of digitized newspapers held by the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. Up to the end of the year, the research portal will almost triple in volume: from currently 340 to over 1,000 copyright-free historical newspaper titles. With regard to volume and scope, digiPress is thus currently the only service of this kind offered by a German library. In the final expansion stage, 7.6 million digitized newspaper pages will be available.

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (BSB) and the Saxon State and University Library Dresden (Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden; SLUB) have started the second phase of the "Fachinformationsdienst Musikwissenschaft" (FID Musikwissenschaft, "Specialised Information Service for Musicology"), a three-year project subsidised by the German Research Foundation (DFG) with around EUR 1.5 million. The objective of the project is to make relevant information services for cutting-edge research in musicology available professionally in Germany.

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Munich and the University of Passau have launched the "Sprechender Sprachatlas von Niederbayern und dem angrenzenden Böhmerwald" ("Speaking linguistic atlas of Lower Bavaria and the adjacent Bohemian Forest region"), which has been developed in a cooperation project. The interactive service is directed at a broad public and is accessible as of now at https://www.bayerische-landesbibliothek-online.de/sprachatlas-niederbayern.

Titled "Martin Luther and the early Reformation in Bavaria. Supporters, adversaries, sympathisers", the cultural portal bavarikon presents its first virtual exhibition in 2017, the year of the Reformation's anniversary. The exhibition is unique, not only with respect to its volume, but also the approach taken: Twenty-one cultural institutions take part in the virtual exhibition showing 123 high-carat exhibits at www.bavarikon.de/luther as of 15 March 2017. bavarikon thus depicts a fascinating image of the Reformation in Bavaria, at the same time enabling viewers to experience the reform movements and the counter-movements on a regional level in Old Bavaria, Franconia and Swabia.

The Department of Music of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek will be able to implement two important projects in the course of the coming three years thanks to the funding by the German Research Foundation: the start of cataloguing and digitization of the Schott archive and the cataloguing and digitization of over 200 valuable opera scores of the 18th century.

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek is testing the discovery service Yewno as an additional topical search engine for digital full texts. The software works on the basis of artificial intelligence and machine learning. The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek is the first European institution to make this new search technology available to its users within the framework of a three-month pilot phase. Users can send their feedback to the project team by means of a response form. The service is available at: https://www.bsb-muenchen.de/en/search-and-service/searching-and-finding/yewno/

The latest present to the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek is of an extraordinary format and volume: a Tripitaka from Inner Mongolia, a 400-volume Buddhist canon in the Mongolian language. The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek thus holds the so far only copy of the new edition of the Mongolian Tripitaka in Germany.

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek is expanding its digital services again. Users from the fields of scholarship and research can now include all digital copies produced so far – thus around 1.2 million volumes with around 270 million book pages and 43 million images – in a similarity-based image search for similar motifs and images. The service is available at https://bildsuche.digitale-sammlungen.de and can also be used on mobile terminals.

Karl-Georg Pfändtner, born in Bamberg in 1965, senior researcher in the Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich, has been appointed Director of the State and City Library of Augsburg as of 1 January 2017. He is the successor of Reinhard Laube, who had occupied this position since 2013.

Titled "Aufbruch zu neuen Ufern" ("Off to new pastures"), the third and last instalment of the exhibition trilogy BILDERWELTEN in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek from 14 November 2016 to 24 February 2017 presents outstanding specimens of book illumination from between the Middle Ages and the modern era: One of the most precious works of book illumination, the prayer book of Emperor Maximilian I with drawings by Dürer, Cranach, Grien and Altdorfer. The book has been divided into two parts since the 16th century, both of which will be presented in the exhibition. Paying tribute to the anniversary of the Protestant Reformation in 2017, the exhibition in the treasure vault presents selected Bibles from Charlemagne to Luther. The first printed book, the Gutenberg Bible of 1454/ 55, will be on display, like the famous Ottheinrich Bible or the Munich Furtmeyr Bible with its masterly illuminations of the Old Testament.