News archive

The current issue 3/2020 of the journal Bibliotheksforum Bayern presents itself in an attractive new layout. Also available online – come and have a look! From the "library as a place of learning" to the "bee library" or the "open library", there are many exciting specialist articles and news about public and academic librarianship in Bavaria and in Germany.

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.

With the article and review database ARTOS, the portal osmikon has been providing for a short time now a further search tool for interdisciplinary search on Eastern and South-Eastern Europe in the field of humanities. Initially accessible only via osmikon/osmikonSEARCH as one of the data sources, ARTOS has now received its own search interface and additionally provides an attractive subscription service.

The Literaturportal Bayern, an online platform for literature hosted by the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, has given the interested public an understanding of the literature country Bavaria for seven years now. We are opening up also for a younger target group now by processing articles of the literature portal dynamically for Instagram.

In order to keep the public informed about interesting topics and findings from research also in a time without events on site, the German Research Foundation and the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek have taken to presenting events in the virtual space. We are starting with the exkurs papers by Prof. Dr. Christian Laforsch and Prof. Dr. Susanne Crewell.

The Specialised Information Service for Russian, East and Southeast European Studies has acquired the digital archive of the "Novoe Russkoe Slovo" – the most important printed medium of Russian emigrants in the USA – with the support of the German Research Foundation. The archive comprises around 260,000 PDF pages which can be searched in full-text mode.

Recently, access has been enabled for researchers in Germany and at German institutes abroad to the digitized archive of the weekly journal "Moscow News" (1930 – 2014) and its short-lived sister publication "Moscow Daily News" (1932 – 1938). The source collection has been licensed by the Specialised Information Service for Russian, East and Southeast European Studies with the support of the German Research Foundation.

In its annual report, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek regularly reports about the library's development in the preceding year, with images and texts that will – hopefully – catch your attention and pique your curiosity with regard to the offers and services of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek.

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (BSB) preserves an extensive collection of most valuable manuscripts and printed works. A selection of 400 important works, which form part of the unique written cultural heritage of Bavaria, has now been made available online at the cultural portal bavarikon. The access to the cultural treasures has been designed to be particularly user-friendly for laypersons, giving an insight into the collection without requiring any prior knowledge. A large part of the manuscripts and printed books in addition has extensive descriptions in German and in English.

The new virtual exhibition at the cultural portal bavarikon illustrates how a piece of paper became one of the most important means of payment. Exhibits from five centuries give an introduction to the history of paper money. The exhibition informs about the function, production and design of paper money in the course of time.

For seven years, the Literaturportal Bayern, a digital platform managed by the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, has been tasking itself with making the literary life in Bavaria in all its diversity visible online in the form of essays, blog entries, encyclopaedic articles, excursions and event notifications. The texts now find their way out of the Internet and into print in the form of a volume of their own.

The manuscript collection of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek records the addition of precious items: A total of three high-ranking German-language manuscripts of Bavarian origin could be acquired at the same time for the library from the antiquarian book trade. After conservatory treatment by the library’s own Institute of Conservation and Restoration and cataloguing, they are now being digitized and will be made available for academic research subsequently.

A recently acquired convolute of around 700 Tibetan manuscripts comes from Mongolia, which is influenced by Tibetan Buddhism. Against the background of the fact that Mongolia experienced a serious cultural setback during the time of communism up to 1990 and many monasteries, temples and Buddhist cultural goods were destroyed, the preservation of these manuscripts is noteworthy.

Some 88,000 copyright-free books from the collection of Augsburg State and City Library, dating from the 16th to the 19th century, can be found and consulted in full text worldwide, free of charge, and without any restrictions, via the library's online catalogue or WorldCat: Zoological works, travel reports, biographies, novels, scientific or medical prints, historical treatises, theological tomes, and much more.

Use our photo stories to take a look at selected images of the exhibition "MUNICH. LOOK here!" and find out about some interesting facts and anecdotes.

bavarikon presents new photograph collections of two partners, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek and the Tucher'sche Kulturstiftung (Tucher Cultural Foundation). The portal on the arts, culture and regional studies of Bavaria thus now offers around 90,000 high-resolution images inviting you to go on a virtual exploration trip!

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek complements its renowned collection by two very rare works of the Czech artist Josef Váchal (1884 – 1969): "Ďáblova zahrádka, aneb přírodopis strašidel" ("The devil's garden, or the natural history of spirits") of the year 1924 and "Šumava umírající a romantická" ("Bohemian Forest dying and romantical") of 1931. The two impressive, leather-bound folio volumes are illustrated with exquisite coloured wood engravings and rank among the absolute masterpieces of Czech modern art between the two world wars.

The Bibliotheksforum Bayern contains specialised articles and news informing about all areas of public and academic librarianship in Bavaria. A main focus of the current issue is on school libraries.

Minister of the Arts Bernd Sibler: "Providing creators of literature with a forum to stay in contact with their audience and to honour their work." Read more in the press release by the Bavarian State Ministry of Sciences and the Arts of 11 June 2020.

The current issue of the journal Bibliotheksmagazin surely holds something for everybody – articles about famous authors, rare printed works, new collections of musicians’ personal papers or inventive artists.

As of 2 June 2020
Cabinet presentation forming part of the series “Musical treasures”
In front of the Reading Room for Music/Maps/Images, the Department of Music shows a cabinet presentation on watermarks in music manuscripts of the 15th and 16th century. The presentation forms the completion point of a DFG-funded cataloguing and thermography project.

The high-quality classificatory subject indexing can now also be used in the OPACplus for thematic searches for academic literature of the past two decades in the subject fields of classical studies, studies of history, musicology and eastern and south-eastern Europe. This constitutes a substantial enhancement of subject-related search possibilities.

With over 630,000 entries, the "Gnomon Bibliographische Datenbank" is one of the most comprehensive and most renowned database systems for specialised literature from the overall field of classical studies, including the subject-specific history of scholarship and science. The migration of the database has now been concluded, a little more than one year after the online launch of the new search interface. Updated on a daily basis, Gnomon provides access to the recorded data which are also incorporated in PropylaeumSEARCH, the central search portal of the Specialised Information Service for Classical Studies.

In the course of the Bavaria-wide loosening of the measures taken due to the corona pandemic, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, which had to be closed completely on 17 March, has been re-opened and taken up its services again step by step. Since 25 May, the library has now been offering the majority of its services again.

On 25 May 2020, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek reopens its successful photography exhibition "MUNICH. LOOK here!" for the public. Visitors can then view the 270 exhibits from the historical image archive of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek with certain limitations – up to and including 31 July 2020 at that.

The Specialised Information Service for Historical Studies has started a newsletter service a short while ago. historicumNEWS informs historians, for example, about literature search in historicumSEARCH or in the Deutsche Historische Bibliografie (German Historical Bibliography), FID licenses available on a supra-regional scale or developments on the platform recensio.regio. Subscribers are additionally kept posted about events and courses.

The provider East View offers free-of-charge access to various online resources for students and researchers up to the end of July of 2020 within the scope of the license held by the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. The offer runs the gamut from "Pravda" (issues up to December 2019), to "Rossiyskaya Gazeta", "Novaya Gazeta", "The Current Digest of the Russian Press" and "The Current Digest of the Chinese Press", up to the e-book collection "Essential Russian Classics".

In order to support students and teaching during the summer semester 2020, the Specialised Information Service for Russian, East and Southeast European Studies provides tutorials on information literacy at short notice, which are intended, among other things, as online study materials for independent use by students.

The Research Association for Provenance Research has presented its activity report for 2019, documenting the research work of the 22 participating institutions, among them also the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. In the course of last year, a total of 362 objects could be restituted, 36 research projects could be processed and over 120 notifications of finds could be published.

More than 2,300 German-language textbooks and study literature of the platform utb-studi-e-book can be used electronically via the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek as of now. Access is provided for registered users of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, also in the form of remote access from home.