News archive

Bayerische Staatsbibliothek | © BSB/U. Rehusch

What is hidden behind the heavy wooden doors at Ludwigstraße 16, what cultural assets are in the collections and how did it all begin?

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Courses and webinars | © BSB/M. McKee

The new training program for the first half of 2024 is now available! Whether you are a curious beginner or an experienced researcher, we have the right course for you.

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East European, Oriental and Asian Reading Room | © BSB/H.-R. Schulz

After you have logged in on the web page of our booking system, you can now view and manage your bookings in a newly designed overview.

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Annual Report 2021, cover | © BSB

The Annual Report for 2021 contains the current key figures and reports about the events of the past year, such as the acquisitions of the photo archives of Volker Hinz and Karsten de Riese, the new acquisitions in the fields of manuscripts and the Orient and Asia, the new BSB working-place reservation system and projects funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

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Bibliotheksmagazin 2/22

We’ll bring you the stars from the sky! The new issue of the Bibliotheksmagazin, a journal jointly published by the Berlin State Library – Prussian Cultural Heritage and the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, informs about current highlights from the state libraries of Berlin and Munich.

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General Reading Room, distancing rules during the Corona pandemic | © BSB/H.-R. Schulz

For operational reasons and in order to reduce the number of unused bookings, future reservations for the General Reading Room and the Periodicals Reading Room can be made only for a maximum of 7 days in advance via the website and via the app. Existing bookings will remain valid.

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#standwithukraine | © BSB

On account of the war of aggression waged by the Russian Federation against Ukraine and the immeasurable suffering that the Russian government is bringing to a peaceful, democratic country, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies and the Berlin State Library – Prussian Cultural Heritage suspend their cooperation with the Russian Presidential Library as from today.

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The Times Digital Archive | © Gale, A Cengage Company

As a newspaper documenting everything, "The Times" has offered important, award-winning reporting, information about parliamentary debates, critical interpretations of facts and a unique historical insight into the views taken by important reporters and issues of the epoch in question already since 1785.

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Economist Historical Archive | © Gale, A Cengage Company

The "Economist Historical Archive" includes the complete contents of "The Economist", the most important international weekly journal for economic and financial policies, from 1843 to 2020. Also the "Financial Times" is one of the most renowned business journals of the world. The "Financial Times Historical Archive" contains the complete articles of all printed issues of the journal from 1888 to 2016.

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Bibliotheksforum Bayern 4/2021, detail of cover | © Building Authority of the Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich/Medical Reading Hall of the University Library

"Libraries have not buried their heads in the sand during the pandemic, but have thought up something new." In its issue 4/2021, the Bibliotheksforum Bayern offers "many examples for the growth of digital library services, but also for the revival of analogue library services", up to and including hybrid events.

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Bibliotheksmagazin 3/21

With articles about Wolf Biermann’s pre-death estate at the Berlin State Library, about our new photo exhibition "Facing the Balkans" (starting on 11 November 2021) or the cultural heritage of Aschaffenburg at bavarikon. Also the review by Director General Dr. Klaus Ceynowa of 14 years' participation of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in the Google Books Project, from which around 1.2 million digital books have emerged so far, is a very interesting read.

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Books for loan | © BSB/H.-R. Schulz

Provided that there are compelling reasons for which users cannot comply with the 3G regulation (providing evidence of full recovery from COVID or of vaccination or presenting an up-to-date negative test result) with respect to visiting the library in person, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek provides a delivery service for borrowing books for home loan and returning them as of 11 October 2021. In addition to the already existing free-of-charge delivery, also the costs of return shipment will be absorbed by the library.

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[From left to right] Dr. Dorothea Sommer (Deputy Director General), Wolf von Lojewski, Dr. Claudia Fabian (Head of the Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books) on the occasion of the donation | © BSB/U. Rehusch

The Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books has welcomed a generous donation: The television journalist Wolf von Lojewski presented Dr. Dorothea Sommer, Deputy Director General, and the library department with his collection of 326 individual sheets of Hartmann Schedel’s World Chronicle.

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© Markus Bormann – fotolia.com

The "Universitetskaja Biblioteka Online" is an online repository offering access to around 70,000 Russian-language e-books and e-journals. Its focus is on humanities, with the majority of publications being about Russia.

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STERN Photo Archive | © BSB/H.-R. Schulz

The first 70,000 images from the STERN Photo Archive are on their way to digitization. This means that the time is drawing a bit nearer when you can see the photos online and use them.

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Bayerische Staatsbibliothek | © BSB/H.-R. Schulz

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (BSB), Germany’s largest research and universal library, will migrate its library services to the cloud-based Alma® platform by Ex Libris. For almost 20 years, the BSB had used a local system that was becoming increasingly complex and meeting the limits of its performance capability. The transition to the cloud-based software as a service solution by Ex Libris, a company of the ProQuest group, is intended to significantly boost efficiency and user friendliness.

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Geographical search option in PropylaeumSEARCH, screenshot of Campania | © BSB/Propylaeum

PropylaeumSEARCH will enable you in the future to search specialised literature bearing reference to certain geographical places of the ancient world via a map-based search access point.

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Theatre scenes | © BSB

The three newly licensed databases comprise theatre manuscripts on Shakespeare stage performances and a wide variety of source materials on the world of theatre of the 18th century and on popular entertainment of the Victorian era.

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Official portrait of King Ludwig II of Bavaria after his accession to the throne in the year 1864. Oil on canvas, Ferdinand Piloty the Younger (1828 – 1895), Munich, 1865 | Bavarian Administration of Palaces, Gardens and Lakes/Schwenk

The cultural portal bavarikon presents the virtual exhibition "König Ludwig II. von Bayern – Leben, Spuren, Mythos" ("King Ludwig II of Bavaria – Life, legacy, legend") including 150 objects from 12 Bavarian cultural institutions. Everybody interested in culture and all Ludwig fans can now walk in the footsteps of the fairytale king – online.

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General Reading Room, distancing rules during the Corona pandemic | © BSB/H.-R. Schulz

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek takes a further step towards normalising its library operations. The opening hours of the General Reading Room, so far strongly limited due to the Corona pandemic, are extended, the learning and working area "Plaza" is re-opened and also the Stabi Café opens its doors again for visitors. Further opening steps are scheduled as of Monday, 12 July 2021.

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Bibliotheksforum Bayern 2/2021, detail of cover | © Patricia Jaeger/Mohr Design on the basis of a photograph by BSB/H.-R. Schulz

"Like other trades and sectors, a little more than one year ago, libraries had to learn very quickly that the pandemic is more than a brief thunderstorm that will be over soon. Libraries have changed at lightning speed; many of these changes will persist, will be integrated into a new normal in the course of time, will complement or replace hitherto formats and services."

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© Literaturportal Bayern

"Over 40 Bavarian authors and mediators of literature benefited from our programme 'Culture in spite of Corona' during the past year", Minister of the Arts Bernd Sibler recently took stock in Munich. "Culture in spite of Corona" offers to creators of literature a virtual platform for publications, for which they receive remuneration.

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© vege – fotolia.com

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.

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Bibliotheksmagazin 2/21

Discover the world of the Berlin State Library – Prussian Cultural Heritage and of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. Among other things, we report about the new app for reserving working places at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, the photo archive of the photographer of aerial views Max Prugger and look back on one year of the Corona pandemic and the associated challenges for a library.

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E-tutorial about the app "BSB Reading Room Reservation" | © BSB/M. Fein

Milena Fein (Information Services) explains in a new tutorial how you can book a working place in the General Reading Room with the app "BSB Reading Room Reservation". In 3 minutes, you can learn how to operate the app and what to do on site in order to use your reservation.

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The sixth angel flies over the land and blows into a buccina to which a banner is attached. Image from: Joachim <de Flore> and Telesphorus <de Cusentia>: Joachimi abbatis revelationes de pontificibus cum figuris bene pictis. 15./16. century | © BSB/Clm 313

The website of the German office of the Répertoire Internationale d’Iconographie Musicale (RIdIM) will be accessible at the new address ridim.musiconn.de as of 26 April 2021. Prior to this, the website and the search application for “Music and dance in the arts" were modernised with respect to their design and functionality.

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Digital Collections, full text, zoom | © BSB

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek has comprehensively updated and improved its digital core piece, the Digital Collections. At the address www.digitale-sammlungen.de, it has now been made even easier to search, browse, explore and admire around 2.7 million digitized titles from the holdings of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, as well as from the regional State Libraries of Augsburg, Bamberg, Regensburg and Passau.

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Bartolomeo Zamberti, Comedia quam lepidissima Dolotechne (1502), sheet 1r | © BSB/Clm 13078

Venice turns 1600 years old on 25 March 2021. The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek congratulates very cordially and offers some delicious “appetizers” from its collection of Venetian manuscripts and incunabula, which, besides the Berlin one, is Germany’s largest collection of this kind.

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App "BSB Reading Room Reservation" – Display to select a date | © BSB/Bokowsky + Laymann

Users of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek can now reserve a working place in the General Reading Room by means of a smartphone app. The new "BSB-Leseplatzreservierung" ("BSB Reading Room Reservation") permits up to five bookings in advance and, among other things, provides a map with the option to reserve your favourite working place, as well as a break function. The app is now available free of charge for Android and iOS. The General Reading Room is re-opened on 16 March 2021.

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© City Archive of Nuremberg/bavarikon

A time span of around 100 years is the period encompassed by the great collection of historical portraits of the Tucher family from Nuremberg. On the basis of selected examples from this collection, the new virtual exhibition in the cultural portal bavarikon invites you to explore the history of portrait photography and learn more about techniques and formats, such as carte de visite photography. You are also offered an insight into the family history of the former patrician family from Nuremberg in the 19th century.

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