Current activities

The digital source collection "The Chernobyl Files. Declassified Documents of the Ukrainian KGB" has been acquired recently within the scope of the Specialised Information Service for Russian, East and Southeast European Studies. It makes Ukrainian and Soviet governmental documents on the nuclear disaster of Chernobyl accessible free of charge Germany-wide and at German institutes abroad.

As of November 2018, the Specialised Information Services for Historical Studies and for Russian, East and Southeast European Studies offer access to 55,000 digitized interviews recorded in 62 countries and in 41 languages, predominantly with survivors of the Holocaust.

Within the scope of the Specialised Information Service for Russian, East and Southeast European Studies the collections "Donetsk and Luhansk Newspaper Collection" and "South Ossetia Presidential Election, 2011 – 2012" have recently been made accessible free of charge Germany-wide and at German institutes abroad.

A few weeks ago, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek received the so-called 100-sheet map of the Russian empire ("Stolistovaya") as a present from private ownership. Consisting of 107 sheets, the work published in Saint Petersburg from 1801 to 1804 constitutes the first multi-sheet, official map of Russia and accordingly a central source of Russian cartography in the 19th century.

A new database is available as of now for searching specialist literature on east, eastern-central and south-eastern Europe. ARTOS includes articles and reviews from currently around 400 specialist journals and selected omnibus works from the broad spectrum of humanities and social-scientific research about east and south-eastern Europe.