Current activities, events

The search portal of the Image Archive is available to users with a new appearance as of today. The reason for this change is the switch-over to a new database system. In the wake of the switch-over, the picture portal now offers modernised web design and partly enhanced functions.

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek has acquired the archive of the well-known photographer Dieter Bauer, which includes around 500,000 images. Taken between 1980 and 2010, the photos document the domestic and foreign political events of the time impressively. The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek thus further expands its renowned Image Archive – the largest of its kind held by any German public-sector institution.

The analogue photo archive of the journal stern with its 15 million prints, negatives and slides is considered as the visual memory of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1948 to 2001. Having acquired the archive in the year 2019, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek now makes the one millionth digitized picture available online in the specially set up portal www.stern-Fotoarchiv.de.

An initial 21,000 pictures of the photographer Isolde Ohlbaum are already available online – in the new picture portal of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. The photographer Isolde Ohlbaum is one of the most famous chroniclers of the national and international literary and artistic scenes.

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek has just activated an image-based similarity search for bavarikon, Bavaria's digital treasure vault. The development from the library's own Munich Digitization Center (MDZ) searches through over three million image segments in the portal from photos, graphics, paintings and illustrations recognized through machine learning. Everybody interested in culture can search for motifs quickly and efficiently now, or can enjoy drifting from one image to another.