Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek

Project VD 18

Digitisation and Indexing of Printed Material Published in the 18th Century in the German-Speaking Areas (VD18)

The aim of the joint project “Digitisation and Indexing of Printed Material Published in the 18th Century in the German-Speaking Areas (VD18)” is to create a German national bibliography for the 18th century. More than 20 libraries in Germany are participating in the project. Researchers are currently indexing and digitising all printed materials published either in German or in the German-speaking areas between 1701 and 1800. The resulting bibliography will then be made available to users online. The Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek in Weimar, whose collections comprise some 80,000 volumes from the 18th century, joined the project in October 2019 with the aim of indexing 3,000 prints over a three-year period. Online users can view the results in the digital collections of the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek, the online catalogue of the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek, the Common Library Catalogue, the VD18 database, the WorldCat, the Central Catalogue of Digitised Prints and the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek.

 

Financing

The VD18 project is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and is part of the DFG funding programme “Indexing and Digitisation”. The project represents a continuation of the DFG’s longstanding commitment since 1969 to finance the national bibliographical catalogue of German printed works in retrospect starting in the 16th century.

 

  • Logo: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG

Project goals

National bibliography

The goal of the VD18 project is to create a national bibliography of the 18th century and thereby serve as a virtual national library. The project aims to record and index all works published in German or in the German-speaking region irrespective of their place of publication. The entire VD18 collection consists of approximately 600,000 printed works. By the end of 2018, the VD18 database contained 196,940 digitised monographs, 10,723 multi-volume works and about 3,520 journals. The VD18 project is the continuation of the predecessor projects VD16 (1501 to 1600) and VD17 (1601 to 1700), for which national bibliographies were created for the previous centuries.

Digitisation

Parallel to cataloguing the works, the VD18 project is completely digitising works in accordance with DFG standards. In the process, the project will build an extensive pool of resources for the study and research of German and European intellectual, scientific and cultural history in the Age of Enlightenment. Researchers are also creating structural data in the digital documents to facilitate easier navigation and search queries using keywords and chapter headings. Complete works or parts thereof are available in PDF format. URNs (uniform resource names) have been assigned to specific works and pages to enable subsequent use and citeability.

Authority files

Authority files with links to catalogue entries and digital documents are provided as points of digital access for online users. These files normally contain information on persons, works, special terms, geography and provenance, and thereby improve search results and contexts. The authority files for works serve an important function, as they do for the parallel project “Works as Knowledge Spaces” which is currently producing an index of central works of the 18th and 19th century.

Selected titles of the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek

Take a literary stroll through the world of the 18th century:

Literature

Philosophy

  • Caraccioli, Louis-Antoine: Der Genuß seiner selbst, oder gründliche Anweisung, wie man seine Glückseligkeit am sichersten befördern könne und müsse : Nebst einem Schreiben des Herrn Verfassers wegen dieser Ausgabe, mit verschiedenen gehörigen Orts eingeschalteten beträchtlichen Zusätzen vermehret nach der beliebten französischen Ausgabe des Herrn Marquis Caraccioli, ... übersetzt durch A. v. d. W. – 1769
    Cat. no.: 19 A 13990
    URL:  https://haab-digital.klassik-stiftung.de/viewer/resolver?urn=urn:nbn:de:gbv:32-1-10031305647

Art

Natural sciences

History and politics

Weimar and Thuringia

Cooperation

You can find more information on the VD18 joint project here and in the following article published in the journal BuB [in German only].

 

Contact

  • Dr. Arno Barnert
    Deputy Director and Head of Department Collections, Special Collections

    P +49 3643 545 209
    E-Mail
  • Anja Jungbluth
    Head of Department Digital Library

    P +49 3643 545 218
    E-Mail
  • Andreas Schlüter
    Head of Digital Development / System Librarian

    P +49 3643 545 233
    E-Mail
  • Rebecca Vetter
    Lbrarian

    P +49 3643 545 847
    E-Mail

Projects of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar are funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the Free State of Thuringia, represented by the State Chancellery of Thuringia, Department of Culture and the Arts.