About the collection
General
With around three and a half million media, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek holds one of the world's largest and most important collections on historical studies, with historically grown holdings.
Areas of collection emphasis 1949 to 2015
From 1949 to 2015, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek managed the areas of collection emphasis "history, general" (8), "history of Germany, Austria and Switzerland" (8.1) and "history of France and Italy" (8.2) within the framework of the programme of supraregional literature provision funded by the German Research Foundation. With regard to these fields of specialisation, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek endeavoured to acquire, catalogue and provide the scholarly relevant literature as comprehensively as possible, fulfilling the function of a reference library for history.
Specialised information service for scholarship and science since 2016
Since 2016, the German Research Foundation has funded a "Fachinformationdienst (FID) Geschichtswissenschaft" ("Specialised Information Service for Historical Studies"), which is set up by the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek and by the Deutsches Museum in Munich (sub-discipline history of technology). The FID Historical Studies offers a broad digital information service on the entire spectrum of historical studies, developing a high-performance infrastructure that connects comfortably usable search functions with the supraregional provision of media relevant for the discipline.
Regions
Broken down to regions, the FID Historical Studies encompasses world history, European history, the history of Germany, Austria and Switzerland, France and Italy, Spain and Portugal.
Periods
Regarding periods of time, the FID covers all epochs since the early Middle Ages.
Contents
With respect to content, the FID encompasses all disciplines of historical studies. Among other things, focal points are auxiliary historical studies, politics, parties, trade unions, constitution, administration, social and economic history, anthropological geography and studies of countries.
Languages
There are hardly any language limitations with respect to the information resources to be newly acquired. Partly, also less widely used European languages are covered in individual disciplines, provided that there is a peak demand for contents which are not available in more widely used languages.