Current activities

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek has acquired the photo archive of Karsten de Riese, which includes around 390,000 images. With this important document of analogue photography in Germany in the second half of the 20th century, the library further expands its already extensive Image Archive, which is the largest of its kind held by any public-sector institution in Germany.

This year’s BKM special programme for the preservation of the written cultural heritage funds 78 projects. The Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM, Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien) makes available around 2 million Euros for this purpose. Valuable and irreplaceable holdings are thus made accessible and are preserved for future generations.

In practice, digital publishing often means that the logic and layout of printed pages are transferred to the computer screen. Under the heading "dynamic publishing", the Center for Electronic Publishing (ZEP) of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek is testing what further potential the digital world has for new concepts, formats and structures.

The Daily Reports of the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) constitute a history documentation of importance for the USA, covering more than half a century (1941 – 1996). They are considered as a first-class collection of sources on decades of eventful world history.

The database "African American Newspapers" provides access to over 350 US newspapers and thereby unique records from the African-American history, culture and everyday life over one and a half centuries, from 1827 to 1998. Accordingly, it also constitutes source material for disciplines such as studies of culture, literature, social history, ethnology and others.