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The paper presents an overview about some of the international relevant projects of digital resources in Germany. Online presentations of primary sources, e.g. photographic material, and bibliographic tools supporting research, such as cross searching, will be presented as potential partners of resource sharing with North America. Not only the possibility of cooperation will be sketched, but also necessary preliminary work and some obstacles will be outlined. This report is accompanied by a short characterization of African studies in Germany and the status quo of Open Access-initiatives.
The enhancing importance of digital documents has effected activities on how to deal with them. One line came from the more general field of "scientific publishing", which was handled in detail by DINI (Deutsche Initiative für Netzwerkinformation). But for this initiative long- time archiving was only one field of many and was not their primary focus. DINI first of all concentrated on the elaboration of effective and standardized methods and tools for publishing and related services on the basis of open access policy via the use of institutional repositories. The second line of projects came from the more general view of maintaining cultural heritage also in a digital world. Especially under the patronage of the Ministry of Education and Research important projects were being financed. Strategic solutions including archives, libraries, and museums are discussed and elaborated within NESTOR, where more technical solutions based on the term of practicability are developed within KOPAL. KOPAL brought together the industry (IBM) with a public- funded technical center (GWDG) and two libraries (DNB and SUB Göttingen). Within this project a general software implementation, which took into consideration all necessary international standards, could be finished last month and has been now for about two weeks. Based on early results within NESTOR it seemed important too, to strengthen all activities by giving them a legal basis. Therefore when the law changed concerning the German National Library from June 22nd this year (DNBG), the library was authorized with all the necessary instruments to collect digital documents in "non-physical" form as well. With this law at the moment Germany is in the rare position of being one of the few countries where the collection of network publications is part of the whole legal deposit strategy.
The paper will provide a brief background to the history of the organization and cooperative efforts of African studies librarians in the United States including their efforts at international cooperation. Particular emphasis will be placed on the current opportunities for improved cooperation as digitization activities increase. Examples will include the DISA and Aluka initiatives and well as the Timbuktu manuscript digitization project at the Center for Research Libraries. Particular emphasis will placed on the possibilities for German-North American cooperation in the area of digital projects of historical photographs given the extensive collections held at Northwestern and Frankfurt.
The University library in Frankfurt/Main owns the largest collection of literature on Judaism and Israel in Germany and one of the major collections in the world. Its task is to document the history of the Jewish people and to serve as a resource for study and research in Germany. The Jewish Division is therefore collecting all relevant national and international publications covering all aspects of post-biblical Judaism and Jewish culture in a most comprehensive manner, as well as all publications on the modern State of Israel. Two databases offer access to the large collections of the Judaica-Division. Yiddish Literature is the database that offers online access to the page images of the outstanding historical Yiddish collection, containing about 800 extremely rare and precious Yiddish and German-Jewish books printed in Hebrew letters from the 16th century onwards. Compact memory is a gateway to more than 100 Jewish periodicals in the German language area published in the 19th and 20th century, providing partly images, partly full-text-search and a bibliographic database of articles. The implementation of a third, new digital project, the »Virtual Judaica-collection« has just started - the digitization and online-presentation of the historical Judaica resources. Formed by his curator Prof. Aron Freimann, it was the largest and most significant Judaica collection on the European continent before the war. The goal is to offer free access to about 18.000 books with 2 Mill. pages over the web. In light of these developments, the presentation will evaluate the current possibilities of German-North-American cooperation in the area of digital projects.
U. S. library resources on South Asia that were built around the limited needs of a handful of Sanskritics before World War II have made a long journey during the past half century. Since the inception of the Library of Congress Cooperative South Asia Acquisition Program (formerly called "PL-480" program), in 1962, libraries have built significant collections with financial support from governmental agencies and philanthropic foundations, to support teaching and research in all areas of social sciences and humanities. These collections have been supplemented by efforts to build retrospective collections and to microfilm rare materials in British and South Asian libraries and archives. Today, in cooperation with South Asian libraries, several projects are underway to preserve and digitize rapidly deteriorating materials so that these riches can be shared with the global scholarly community through electronic means.
Seit 2005 ist die Bibliothek des Südasien-Instituts in Kooperation mit der UB Heidelberg Trägerin des DFG-geförderten Sondersammelgebiets Südasien. Damit hat sie von der UB Tübingen ein traditionsreiches Sondersammelgebiet übernommen, dessen Geschichte bis ins Jahr 1949 zurückreicht. Der Vortrag wird zum Einen einen kurzen Überblick über den historischen Kontext des SSG Südasien geben und zum Anderen über Neuentwicklungen, wie z.B. die Virtuelle Fachbibliothek Südasien, die in den letzten zwei Jahren an der Bibliothek des Südasien-Instituts aufgebaut wurde. Vor diesem Hintergrund soll vor allem das Kooperationspotential im Bereich digitaler Informationsressourcen beleuchtet werden.
Large American research libraries have been acquiring - by purchase and by lease - huge multi-disciplinary electronic collections of primary and secondary source materials. For example, the Digital Evans and Canadian Poetry easily make available to scholars primary materials that once were scattered in libraries across North America and Europe. The American State Papers, 1789 – 1838 collection allows easier searching of fragile rare materials. Collections made by libraries digitizing their own holdings, such the Archive of Early American Images from the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, make research materials more discoverable and usable. Yet recent scholarship in American Studies by American and European scholars makes relatively little use of these new materials. Both disparities and congruities in what scholars use and what research libraries collect are apparent. Some simple reasons explain the dissonance. Furthermore, conversations with scholars suggest that materials and collections alone will not suffice to support research. Librarians’ skills and actions will increase the value of the new research materials.
To stimulate further discussion, I would like to briefly tackle the following questions: * How can one become informed about what is going on in German Studies in the US? * What kinds of American guides to German resources are available? * What kinds of German Studies resources are being produced in the US? * What do we know about how scholars are using (or not) these guides and resources?