Digitalization of medieval manuscripts at the State and University Library Bremen

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Peter Burschel; Maria Elisabeth Müller
• Subject Area: Medieval History
• Term: from 2019 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 429077349

The State and University Library Bremen owns 127 medieval manuscripts (including three permanent loans), which were created between the 9th and the early 16th century. Today's collection of medieval manuscripts combines holdings from various libraries in Bremen, such as the library of the former St. Petri Cathedral, whose holdings were transferred first to the Athenaeums Library in 1684, then to the Bremen public library in 1863, and the private library of lawyer and polymath Melchior Heiminsfeld Goldast (1578-1635), whose collection is part of the founding stock of the Bibliotheca Bremensis. Furthermore, there are some unique volumes from the town churches and monasteries in Bremen.Most of the medieval manuscripts have been catalogued in the wake of a previous DFG-funded in-depth development project and have been published in a print catalogue. Throughout the project, a total of 119 medieval manuscripts from the SuUB Bremen will be digitised at the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel. Furthermore, the three previously uncatalogued manuscripts will be catalogued according to DFG guidelines.The completion of the project sees the entire holdings of the 127 medieval manuscripts from the SuUB Bremen annotated with modern and high-quality manuscript descriptions, the holdings completely digitised and all data indexed and made accessible for research via the "Digital Collections" of the SuUB Bremen and the "Manuscript Portal". The digital copies of the SuUB Bremen, resulting from the project, will be available for reuse under Public Domain Marc.

• DFG Programme: Cataloguing and Digitisation (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)