Current activities

In cooperation with the University Library of Constance, the Specialised Information Service for Historical Studies offers the two databases "Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice" and "Travel Writing, Spectacle and World History" of the provider Adam Matthew Digital to everybody interested as of now.

Test access up to 31 May 2019
The Specialised Information Services for Historical Studies and for Russian, East and Southeast European Studies of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek take part in the test access of the Berlin State Library (Specialised Information Service Asia) to the database "Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports, 1941 – 1996".

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek has successfully submitted three requests for the continuation of the funding line "Fachinformationsdienste für die Wissenschaft" ("Specialised Information Services for Research and Scholarship") by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The library receives funds in the amount of EUR 7.4 million for the years 2019 to 2021. They will serve for the further expansion of the Specialised Information Services for Classical Studies, Historical Studies and Russian, East and Southeast European Studies.

The publishing house Gruner + Jahr commits the analogue photographic archive of the journal STERN to the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (BSB) in Munich, in order to secure the long-term existence of the archive and to make it accessible to the public and to research. The donation comprises over 15 million photographs from the years 1948 to 1997 in the form of prints, negatives and slides. The archive constitutes one of the largest collections of photographs in the German language area. It is considered the visual memory of the Federal Republic of Germany and one of the most important documents of photo journalism on a worldwide scale.

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.