News archive

The services for recent acquisitions of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek have been technically and functionally modernized as of 1 July 2019. For the subject areas of historical and classical studies, music and Eastern Europe, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek now offers three new services on topical books and other new acquisitions forming part of its collections.

Jürgen Diet, the deputy head of the Department of Music of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, has been elected as one of the IAML Vice Presidents. IAML stands for "International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres" and is an international association of around 1,500 music libraries in 49 countries.

As of now, 16 new and 183 complemented newspaper publishers with 1.2 million pages are available in digiPress, the newspaper portal of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. The portal for historical newspapers comprises over 7.8 million digitized pages by now.

The current issue of the journal Bibliotheksforum Bayern contains, among other things, an introduction of the new members of the executive board of the Bavarian Library Association (BBV) and their goals and aspirations.

From the Wessobrunn prayer to Lorenz von Westenrieder – the new virtual exhibition in bavarikon offers an overview of the most important and most interesting monuments of literature and language held by the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek as part of its collection of Bavarica. Look forward to documents bearing testimony to the early Middle Ages, works of the early modern age, spiritual and courtly literature and much more.

The Specialised Information Service (FID) for Russian, East and Southeast European Studies has acquired a license for free-of-charge, Germany-wide access to the digital source collection "Soviet Cinema Online. Archival Documents from RGALI, 1923 – 1935" with the support of the German Research Foundation. The database contains digitized archive materials from the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI) on the formative phase of the Soviet film industry in the years from 1923 to 1935.

Artists' books are primarily works of art. The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek holds one of the most important collections of international artists' books and, with the foundation of a common blog, creates an international communication tool for collecting institutions, researchers, students and private collectors.

With over 600,000 entries, the Gnomon Bibliographic Database is one of the most comprehensive and most renowned database systems for specialist literature from the overall field of classical studies, including the subject-specific history of scholarship and science. The new search interface of the database was launched online on 6 May 2019.

8 April – 15 November 2019
Cabinet presentation of the map collection
The Pfinzing atlas, created by the Nuremberg trader, mathematician and cartographer Paul Pfinzing (1554 – 1599), forms part of the most important works of cartography produced in Nuremberg in the 16th century. It contains hand-drawn and hand-coloured maps of the imperial city of Nuremberg and its territory, as well as various territorial representations from the private environment of the Pfinzing family.

A sensational find has taken place at the time of the 165th anniversary of the composer Engelbert Humperdinck (01/09/1854 – 27/09/1921). In the course of cataloguing works within the scope of the academy project "Répertoire Internationale des Sources Musicales (RISM)" domiciled at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, an autograph of Engelbert Humperdinck was rediscovered among the collection of rare materials of the Berlin University of the Arts: the dramatic cantata for three solo parts and orchestra "Die Fischerin" based on a text by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

15 April 2019 – 7 July 2019
Starting in the treasure vaults of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek on 15 April, the third part of the exhibition "God, the world and Bavaria" tells about "war and peace, joy and sorrow". The exhibits are from the collections of the ten regional State Libraries of Bavaria, including a filigree silver binding crafted by a goldsmith from Augsburg, a caricature by E. T. A. Hofmann from his time in Bamberg, a handwritten letter by Bertolt Brecht to his childhood sweetheart, as well as a little wartime cookbook from Regensburg of 1915.

Using the English-language manuscript Cod.angl. 2 as an example, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek demonstrates the innovative features of the technology of the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF, pronounced as "triple I F") in a pilot project: In the digitized image, the text of the handwritten logbook entries from the 16th century is laid over the image accurately, and can thus be read line by line in modern script (transcript).

The Joint Committee of the German Research Foundation (DFG) has decided on the funding of a national consortium with Cambridge University Press on 29 March 2019. This means that all German scholars affiliated with an institution that adopts the license can publish materials in the open access format in journals of the publishing house. The contract was negotiated by the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, which will also organise the implementation of the contract.

In cooperation with the University Library of Constance, the Specialised Information Service for Historical Studies offers the two databases "Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice" and "Travel Writing, Spectacle and World History" of the provider Adam Matthew Digital to everybody interested as of now.

Scholarship, regional poetry and a literary search for traces – the Literaturportal Bayern again presents new contents in its thematic module on interesting historical and biographical aspects of Bavarian literature.

Test access up to 31 May 2019
The Specialised Information Services for Historical Studies and for Russian, East and Southeast European Studies of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek take part in the test access of the Berlin State Library (Specialised Information Service Asia) to the database "Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports, 1941 – 1996".

Students and employees of the Ludwig Maximilians University Munich receive their library reader pass in connection with the LMUcard in the future. Reader passes issued by the University Library which have been valid so far are planned to be exchanged accordingly up to the end of September 2019.

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek offers access to the e-books of the Full Collection of Cambridge University Press including over 37.000 titles for a further year, up to the end of January 2020. With respect to subject fields, around two thirds of the titles belong to the field of humanities and social sciences, and around one third belongs to the field of science, technology and medicine.

The publishing house Peter Lang specialises in literature focused on humanities and social sciences. Around 6,900 e-books in the German language have been made accessible for registered library users within the scope of the license held by the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek a short while ago.

“The first issue of the Bibliotheksforum Bayern in 2019 shows in an incredible density the impressive depth and width of the presence of all our library types, which, despite the great diversity of their target groups and missions, have one common trait: Finding answers to the urgent questions of our increasingly digital, complex and heterogeneous world.”

The Specialised Information Service for Russian, East and Southeast European Studies has acquired a license for free-of-charge access to the “Krokodil Digital Archive” containing the digital copies of all issues of Krokodil. "Krokodil" was a Soviet satirical periodical that was published from 1922 to 2008 and poked fun at topics such as religion, alcoholism, the Soviet bureaucracy or the politics and society in the “West” in its caricatures and satirical texts.

Within the scope of the Specialised Information Service for Russian, East and Southeast European Studies, the digital collection "Slavonic Bibles Online" has recently been made accessible free of charge Germany-wide and at German institutes abroad. The digital collection comprises a total of 100 works in various Slavic languages, in particular in Church-Slavonic, which were produced in around 30 Eastern-European locations, but also in Berlin or Venice.

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek has successfully submitted three requests for the continuation of the funding line "Fachinformationsdienste für die Wissenschaft" ("Specialised Information Services for Research and Scholarship") by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The library receives funds in the amount of EUR 7.4 million for the years 2019 to 2021. They will serve for the further expansion of the Specialised Information Services for Classical Studies, Historical Studies and Russian, East and Southeast European Studies.

The works of the German-Italian composer Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (1876 – 1948) have no longer been protected by copyright since the start of the year 2019. Wolf-Ferrari, who lived and worked in Munich for many years, became famous predominantly as a composer of operas, but also created numerous chamber music works. The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek holds a unique collection of his music manuscripts, which can now be made available online almost in its entirety to everybody interested.

Together with students of the Institute for German Philology under the direction of Prof. Dr. Waldemar Fromm and Laura Mokrohs and with the University Library of the LMU Munich, the Division of Personal Papers (Dr. Rahel Bacher and Dr. Maximilian Schreiber) has devised and set up an extensive exhibition on Paul Renner.

The publishing house Gruner + Jahr commits the analogue photographic archive of the journal STERN to the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (BSB) in Munich, in order to secure the long-term existence of the archive and to make it accessible to the public and to research. The donation comprises over 15 million photographs from the years 1948 to 1997 in the form of prints, negatives and slides. The archive constitutes one of the largest collections of photographs in the German language area. It is considered the visual memory of the Federal Republic of Germany and one of the most important documents of photo journalism on a worldwide scale.

As of 21 January 2019, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek shows books, maps and globes of the 16th and 17th century in the second part of its exhibition “God, the World and Bavaria”. Titled “From the Orient and the Occident”, a number of outstanding pieces are shown, such as two globes of Gerhard Mercator, the celestial atlas of Andreas Cellarius, “De Revolutionibus” of Nicolaus Copernicus and a coat of arms of Lucas Cranach the Elder.

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek offers a broad spectrum of literature and search possibilities – no matter whether you require material for scholarly works, for professional or private further training and education. Our courses are intended to help you find your way through the information jungle. We are looking forward to your visit!

Inspired by Hermann Lingg's (1820 – 1905) humorous poem "Das Krokodil zu Singapur" ("The crocodile of Singapore"), the association of poets from Munich was called "Das Krokodil" or "Die Krokodile" when it was founded in 1857. In line with this, the symbol of the association was of course a crocodile. A new virtual exhibition at bavarikon now presents a portrait of this poets' society.

The digital source collection "The Chernobyl Files. Declassified Documents of the Ukrainian KGB" has been acquired recently within the scope of the Specialised Information Service for Russian, East and Southeast European Studies. It makes Ukrainian and Soviet governmental documents on the nuclear disaster of Chernobyl accessible free of charge Germany-wide and at German institutes abroad.