Cooperative digitization and presentation of all the estates and foundations/archives of Senckenberg from the 18th to the 20th century in Frankfurt am Main

• Applicants: Franziska Kiermeier, since 2/2022; Professor Dr. Volker Mosbrugger; Daniela Poth, since 7/2020
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History ; History of Science
• Term: from 2018 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 392343239

It is planned to digitize the Senckenberg holdings, which are kept in two Frankfurt archives, and make them available for research. Simultaneously, partly divided holdings shall be reunited virtually in this manner. In the Institute for the History of Frankfurt (ISG) as well as in the archive center of the UB JCS (University Library of Frankfurt) the estate of Johann Christian Senckenberg (1707-1772), the founder of the Dr. Senckenbergische Stiftung (Senckenberg Foundation) and name giver to the Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung (The Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History), the vast file collections of the mentioned foundation plus the substantial holdings of the SGN are kept. While the foundation was of vital importance for the medical institutes of todays University of Frankfurt and other institutions and was closely connected to the SGN, the SGN is now classed among the five biggest institutions for Nature Research worldwide. The SGN archive was handed over to the Institute for the History of Frankfurt in fall 2016 as a permanent loan. Other permanent loans stocked in the institute as well as in the archive center of the UB JCS include both partial holdings of the foundation; some other archive estates, that are closely intertwined with both Senckenberg and the SGN, are being stored there as well. It is planned to culminate the project shortly after the time of the end of the Second World War. The holdings involved are: archive of the SGN, ISG Frankfurt; Dr. Senckenbergische Stiftung, ISG Frankfurt as well as UB JCS; estates (all UB JCS), including Na 31 Nachlass J.C. Senckenberg. The total extent of the mentioned holdings amounts to over 373.000 pages. The search engines of the these holdings have already been indexed digitally and are accessible in the archival databases. There are plans to present the digital copies on the digitization platform of the UB JCS (Visual Library) as standard. The aim of the digitization project is to record holdings of substantial transregional significance for the scientific community; this is in reaction to the demand for optimized accessibility of the targeted collection focus in the scientific community. Due to the upcoming 200-year jubilee of the SGN in 2017 and the 250-year anniversary of Senckenbergs death an additional increase in scientific interest is to be expected. Thus the virtual environment addresses the criterion for access to holdings in their entirety. Other scientifically induced criteria include: individuality (such as estates of researcher personalities), exemplary nature (historical development of medicine and natural science, municipal foundations), as well as unfamiliarity (applies to the Senckenberg estate, which was only indexed in 2016 and to the SGN-archive respectively).

• DFG Programme: Cataloguing and Digitisation (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)
• Ehemalige Antragstellerinnen / Ehemalige Antragsteller: Dr. Evelyn Brockhoff, until 2/2022; Dr. Heiner Schnelling, until 7/2020