From the MDZ

MDZ is working on the implementation of IIIF technology. Find out more and try our Mirador Demonstrator with some medieval manuscripts of the BSB.

With this app, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek makes more than 30 German-language first editions from its extensive collections available in digital form. We invite you to discover some masterpieces of German literature on your smart phone or tablet, in a form you have not known so far. The app can be downloaded for free from Apple's App Store.

Access to image-based resources is fundamental to research, scholarship and the transmission of cultural knowledge. Until now, much of the Internet’s image-based resources have been locked up in silos, with access restricted to custom-built applications. The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) supports uniform display of images of books, maps, scrolls, manuscripts, musical scores and archival material from participating institutions for display, manipulation, measurement and annotation by scholars and students working individually or in groups around the world. More information can be found on the homepage of the International Image Interoperability Framework.

'Sunflowers' by van Gogh, the royal crown of Bavaria, Dürer's 'Self-Portrait Wearing a Coat with Fur Collar', the fairy tale castles of Ludwig II and more than 200,000 other objects are being presented in an enhanced version of bavarikon, the Portal for art, culture and regional studies. BSB and it's Munich Digitization Centre is one of 13 contributing institutions and the technical provider of this project.

After the great success of the reading of the entire 'Inferno' of Dante's Divine Comedy in 2014, the second part of the Dante Marathon with the reading of the 'Purgatory' (Purgatorio) will take place sunday, April 26 at the BSB. The reading will take place in Italian with German surtitles. Block 1: 9.30 - 11 am / block 2: 11.30 am - 1 pm / block 3: 1.30 - 3 pm / block 4: 3.30 - 5 pm / block 5: 5.30 - 7 pm. Location: Bavarian State Library, Ludwigstr 16, 80539 Munich, Reading Room Music, Maps and Images (1st floor).

Bavaria's Minister of Science Dr. Ludwig Spaenle is to return the oldest Polish Pontifical, the so-called Pontifical of Płock to the Catholic Church of Poland this week. At the Polish Foreign Ministry, Mr. Spaenle will hand over this valuable historical manuscript to the Bishop of Płock, Piotr Libera. Basis of the return is the Washington Agreement.

An exhibition in the entry hall of our Reading Room for Music, Maps and Images presents several plans, projects and perspectives of the building of the Bavarian State Library which were not realized the intended way. You are cordially invited to follow the thought experiments of imaginary buildings and to ask yourself the question: 'What would have happened if...?'. Until September 18, Monday to Friday 9 AM to 5 PM (CET), closed on bank holidays. Admission is free.

Our library presents a small cabinet exhibition on the topic of 'Dervishes and dervish orders in the late Ottoman empire', forming part of the series 'kOSTproben' (samples from the east). It casts a light on the mystical movement in the late Ottoman empire, dervishes, dervish orders and dervish convents. Until April 17, 2015 in the entrance area of the East European, Oriental and Asian Reading Room. Monday to Friday 9 AM to 5 PM (CET), closed on bank holidays. Admission is free.

The Bavarian State Library in the Digital Age - a special issue of 'Bibliotheksforum Bayern' (in German language). The PDF version (PDF) of the issue is free of charge.

The Digital Collections have been enriched by a series of valuable autographs. Among them are letters of the philosopher Immanuel Kant, the brothers Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt, German writer E. T. A. Hoffmann, the mysterious Kaspar Hauser, as well as the leader of the Tyrolean rebellion of 1809, Andreas Hofer.

By the end of 2014, our long-term preservation system recorded 1,229,806,792 files (574 terabytes). The growth of the past year was 72 million files (62 TB). The large part of this information comes from the digitization activities in recent years.

'Deutsche Biographie', the historical and biographical information system for the German-speaking world, is online now with extended features. It includes digital full texts of more than 48,000 historical and biographical articles of the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB, 1875-1912) and the Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB, since 1953). It incudes various information from other biographical dictionaries as well as different online resources such as works and portraits. Realized in cooperation with the Historische Kommission of the Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften and supported by Bundesarchiv, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, DLA Marbach, Deutsches Museum München, Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv, Foto Marburg, Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.

On the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the death of Hartmann Schedel, the Bavarian State Library shows his personal copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle which came to Munich in the 16th century together with the whole library of the Schedel family. The gradual construction of the collection is traced through the stations of Schedels life. Exhibition from November 19, 2014 to March 1, 2015.

From October 24 to November 21, 2014, the Library of the Aschaffenburg Castle is presenting the Golden Evangeliary of Mainz. The 'BSB Explorer' provided to the exhibition by the MDZ, allows full access in high resolution to the digitized version of this precious manuscript of the 13th century.

The collection of digitized works from the BSB in the World Digital Library has been extended to a number of outstanding religious and liturgical manuscripts. Among them are treasures such as the Evangeliary of Uta, the poems of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim, who is regarded as the first German poetess, as well as the Prayerbook of Otto III. The World Digital Library now comprises 119 works from the BSB. 30 more will follow within the next months.

The 'Bellifortis' by Konrad Kyeser illustrates on more than 300 pages military technology from the perspective of the Middle Ages. It also contains the first known picture of a chastity belt. The manuscript was created between 1402 and 1405 in Bohemia.

The estate of Therese, princess of Bavaria contains an extensive collection of photographs from travels who led the princess between 1871 and 1911 to Spain, Portugal and Greece, Tunis and Algeria, northern Europe, Russia, Brazil and the west of South America. This collection is available online now.

A recent press release of our project partner Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn about the completion of the pilot project on the digital edition of the Acta Pacis Westphalicae.

The Nuremberg chronicle of the physician and humanist Hartmann Schedel (1440 to 1514) was published from 1493 in different editions. Schedel's library is considered the most comprehensive private collection of books in Germany, which has survived from the 15th century. Schedel was interested in almost all areas of knowledge in the late Middle Ages. The Bavarian State Library preserves over 370 manuscripts and 460 prints from the possession of Hartmann Schedel today.

Sigi Sommer arbeitet als Lokalreporter und Sportberichterstatter für die Süddeutsche Zeitung. Für die Tageszeitung schreibt er seit 1948 Reportagen und Plaudereien und ist vom ersten Tag an Mitarbeiter der neu gegründeten Abendzeitung. Von 1948 bis 1987 erscheint dort wöchentlich seine Kolumne "Blasius der Spaziergänger", die Sigi Sommer zum scharf beobachtenden Chronisten seiner Zeit und zum beliebtesten Journalisten Münchens macht. Anlässlich seines 100. Geburtstags am am 23. August widmet ihm das "Literaturportal Bayern" einen ausführlichen Beitrag.

The 'Music Treasures Consortium' of the Library of Congress prvides online access to the most important music manuscripts and print materials from the collections of the most prestigious music libraries. Now the metadata of 125 music manuscripts of the BSB are available on this platform.

As the earliest preserved gospel in Hungarian language (1466), the so-called 'Munich codex' is the core specimen of the Hungarian manuscript collection of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Cod.hung. 1) and forms part of the so-called 'Hussite bible'. It can be regarded as the philological-historical monument of the research of Hungary. The work is now available to the academic world not only in the form of the edition by Szabó T. Ádám, but also as digital copy.

The viewer for polyphonic music works allows simultaneous display of belonging together voices from a set of parts to different segments of the screen. More than half of the 2,200 surviving in the BSB older printed music was published in the form of part-books (votes).

By 2008, forty volumes of the The Acta Pacis Westphalicae (APW) edition had already been published. By the end of 2012, around 28,000 pages of these volumes were digitized and made interactive. The APW digital edition is now available online. The project is being carried out by the Early Modern History Department of the Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn and by the Bavarian State Library in Munich. It was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

This richly illustrated magazine presents buildings, interiors, furniture, ceramics and other artistically designed things of everyday life from 1897 until 1929. Other major topics are landscape architecture and garden or park design. A project supported by the University Library of the Technical University of Munich, the missing volumes presented are available.