Digitization and online publication via ‘Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek’ of the archive of Sparkasse Stormarn (1824-1990)

• Applicant: Stefan Watzlawzik
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History ; Economic and Social History
• Term: from 2019 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 415708552

The project of the county archive Stormarn serves the digitization of the board of directors of the Sparkasse Stormarn and its antecessor institutes from 1824 to 1990. Background of the project is the desire of the research, as central as possible and online based access to digitized archival material of savings banks (Sparkasse) to be able to deal with a variety of political, economic, spatial planning and social and societal problems. So far, only a few savings banks have made their documents on public archives available for free research, so that so far (May 2018), apart from photographs, address documents and advertising material, no material can be found in the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek.The savings banks in the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein and the later province of Schleswig-Holstein and thus in the county of Stormarn are since the 19th century one of the most important and most consistent social reform measures. Schleswig-Holstein took a special position that partly can be explained by the liberal attitude in the Danish state without restrictive savings bank legislation. The founding of the savings banks was usually first through private initiative and self-organization for social reasons. With the generated surpluses, many infrastructural, social and cultural projects of municipalities and other local institutions were promoted and implemented. In the second half of the 20th century, the Sparkasse was a key catalyst in the transformation of the predominantly agricultural region into the economically strongest district in northern Germany.The goal of the project is the provision of archival sources in the Archivportal-D and the German Digital Library (DDB) as well as on the Findbuch.net presence of the county archive. The selected stock is a quantitatively and qualitatively dense tradition from 1824 until after the Second World War.In the context of the project, about 300 recording units are digitized, which are composed of files, volumes and collections. In preparation, damaged documents are restored and accompanied by a deeper development in order to facilitate the search for research. The digital copies (work derivatives) are linked to the context information for online publication. The county archive Stormarn is already one of the largest suppliers of digitized archives collections within the DDB. The scanning workflow has been successfully tested and implemented for larger inventory processing. The quality standards of the DFG for digitization will be achieved and the delivery to the DDB has already been successfully implemented for other collections.

• DFG Programme: Cataloguing and Digitisation (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)
• Co-Investigators: Barbara Günther; Tim Schumann; Sarah Walter