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The portal "The First World War" contains a large number of primary sources on the First World War, such as photographs, letters, flyers, caricatures and much more. It is complemented by a number of further services, such as time lines, interactive map materials, case studies, etc. These allow placing the digitized sources into a broader context.

According to most recent findings, the Bavarian State Library’s broadside of globe gores by Martin Waldseemüller (BSB call number Mapp. I,5 ua) is not an authentic print but a copy, probably produced before 1960, of the document in possession of the University of Minnesota. This is the conclusion based on the results of a thorough materials science examination conducted by the Bavarian State Library’s Institute of Conservation and Restoration. The print, thus far dated from the year 1507, is one of only six known copies. The Waldseemüller map is famous for being the first to use the name "America".

Historians and everybody interested in regional history can use the research platform "recensio.regio – Review Platform for Regional History" as of now. The portal offers access to reviews of regional-historical specialist journals, constituting a primary point of access for information on recent publications about regional history in the German language. The reviews of the cooperating journals are available to the users in full-text search mode. The platform can be accessed freely and free of charge.

The e-book collection includes over 2,000 titles on Islamic law, Islam studies and Islamic theology, predominantly in Arabic and partly also in English. Most of them are publications of the last decade. The books were already published in print, but only a small part of them has been available in Germany.

In the "Digital East Asia Collections", the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek presents digitized Chinese, Japanese and Korean manuscripts and printed works from its extensive holdings stemming from East Asia. The digital copies have been prepared in a digitization project supported by the German Research Foundation and in cooperation with Google. The web portal was relaunched on 1 February 2018.

Having cooperated productively already for a long time, the Literature Portal Bavaria and the Literaturhaus Munich have now become cooperation partners also officially. The goal of the cooperation is primarily the exchange of information and contents for mutual use and broader public awareness, as well as to sound out where conceptual intersections and common areas of emphasis exist, calling for commonly organised events.

On the occasion of the presentation of new contents of bavarikon in Amberg this week, State Secretary of Science and the Arts Bernd Sibler referred to the digital platform on the art, culture and regional studies of Bavaria as a "treasure trove of Bavarian history and culture". "This treasure trove is of inestimable value to the public, since it can be opened free of charge, independently of time and location and using diverse channels."

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (BSB) takes part in a project supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) for developing a national web portal for book manuscripts of the Middle Ages and the modern era held by German cultural institutions.

The Times Digital Archive is an unrivalled service for exploring the content of the most widely known and most frequently quoted daily of all – online and within the context of the respectively chosen original issue.

Discover dozens of specialist journals, series and conference proceedings from the fields of philosophy, religious studies and classical philology. Explore these unique collections of materials, part of which go back to the year 1890. All articles are full-text searchable.

At the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (BSB) and the Saxon State and University Library Dresden (SLUB) services for the expert community of musicologists have been developed within the scope of the project "Specialised Information Service for Musicology" (Fachinformationsdienst, FID) supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Since January 2018, these services have been pooled together under the new trademark "musiconn – für vernetzte Musikwissenschaft" (musiconn – Network for Musicology).

The Bavarian Library Network (BVB) and the Cooperative Library Network of Berlin-Brandenburg (KOBV) look back on ten years of partnership between their institutions. At the end of December 2007, the partners founded their strategic alliance with the objective of expanding the service scope in their respective associations and making use of synergy effects.

The former Director of the State Library of Bamberg, Professor Dr. Bernhard Schemmel, has been awarded the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for his outstanding services. On 18 December 2017, Bernd Sibler, State Secretary in the Bavarian Ministry of Education and Culture, Science and the Arts, awarded the great distinction to Bernhard Schemmel in Munich.

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek receives the personal papers of Anna Wimschneider (1919 – 1993) as a donation from the community of heirs, i.a. the handwritten manuscript of her autobiographic novel "Herbstmilch" ("Autumn Milk").

Since the beginning of October 2017, all media that are provided in the collection area of the General Reading Room following your orders have already been booked as loans for consultation in the reading room. You can start working with these media immediately.

Twelve female and one male graduate of the field of specialisation librarianship have received their diplomas after three years of study at the Hochschule für den öffentlichen Dienst in Bayern (University of Public Service in Bavaria) and various Bavarian training libraries.

23 November 2017 – 28 March 2018
Cabinet presentation in the series "Musical treasures"
It is owed to the Bavarian dukes' enthusiasm for collecting that the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek currently preserves not only the monumental Renaissance choir books, but in addition around 70 further music manuscripts of this epoch, in the form of tablatures and part books. Displaying specially produced reproductions, the cabinet presentation shows the musical abundance and complexity of these precious holdings.

For the duration of the reconstruction measures on the ground floor and basement floor, the access routes to the Periodicals Reading Room, the cafeteria, to the lockers and toilets will be changed. A current floor plan can help you find your way around during this time.

Since the end of October, the Specialised Information Service (FID) for Historical Studies has offered access to the database "Conditions and Politics in Occupied Western Europe, 1940 – 1945", which forms part of the Archives Unbound Collection of Gale Cengage, to the Germany-wide expert community for a three-month trial period. So far, the database has been available only at two German libraries. A FID license will be negotiated in case of a sufficient frequency of use by researchers.

The digital source collection has been licensed for Germany-wide use within the framework of the Specialised Information Service for Russian, East and Southeast European Studies with the support of the German Research Foundation. Access to "The Stalin Digital Archive" and the digital copies it contains of the fund 558 from the Russian State Archive for Socio-Political History (RGASPI), will make the research of Stalin and of the Soviet Union significantly easier for researchers in Germany in the future.

No matter whether you are in one of the reading rooms, in the Fürstensaal or in the cafeteria: In almost all user areas of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, the Bavarian WLAN is now accessible for everybody – free of charge, open and unrestricted.

The culture portal bavarikon has launched a new newsletter: It gives a monthly overview of new contents and partner institutions and informs about everything worth knowing about bavarikon. The topic of the first issue is the 500th anniversary of the Reformation.

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek acquires an extensive collection of partisan prints, predominantly from the region of today's Slovenia. The library thus complements its holdings by adding first-class sources on the South-East European and German history during the Second World War.

On 6 March 2007 the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich, the then Bavarian Minister of Sciences Dr. Thomas Goppel and Google announced that the library was going to join Google's book search project. In cooperation with the Internet corporation, the copyright-free holdings of the library, focusing on works from the 17th to the end of the 19th century, were to be digitized – an important milestone in the digitization strategy of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek.

The "Fachinformationsdienst Geschichtswissenschaft" (FID) offers researching historians Germany-wide access to various databases, e-books and e-journals.

On 27 September 2017, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (BSB) handed back 67 titles formerly owned by the "Association of Catholic religious education teachers at the institutions of higher education in Bavaria" to its successor organisation, the "Association of Catholic religious education teachers at the grammar schools in Bavaria" (Verband der katholischen Religionslehrer und Religionslehrerinnen an den Gymnasien in Bayern e. V., KRGB).

The umbrella organisation of the German library associations, Bibliothek & Information Deutschland (BID) e. V., awards the Karl Preusker Medal 2017 to the Executive Library Director Dr. Claudia Fabian, Head of the Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek.

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek has acquired the musical estate of the conductor and pianist Wolfgang Sawallisch (1923 – 2013). The personal papers include a large number of conductor's and pocket scores with handwritten entries by Sawallisch and sound recordings, in addition to music manuscripts of his own works.

A large part of the reference library on Eastern Europe (Hbost) is currently being deacidificated and will consequently be unavailable for a period of presumably two months.

From 20 September 2017 to 7 January 2018, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek presents the book as an autonomous work of art, forming the center of its exhibition "SHOWCASE – Artists' books from the collection of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek". The exhibition illustrates impressively the enormous differences between the artists' approaches to using the book as a form of expression. The works on display reach from the historical avant-gardes of the 20th century to conceptual artists' books of the 1960s and 1970s, and up to the present.