Digitisation, indexing and presentation of the archive of the Regensburgische Botanische Gesellschaft (Botanical Society of Regensburg)

• Applicant: Dr. Gabriele Schweikl
• Term: from 2020 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 442908216

The main goals of the proposed project are the full digitization of the copyright-free documents of the Botanical Society of Regensburg, the indexing of the data and the open access presentation of the digitized documents. It makes the unique document holdings of the world’s oldest still active botanical association (covering the period from 1790 to 1900) permanently available for geobotanists and historians of science as well as for cultural and literary studies, thus contributing to the developing field of digital humanities. The resulting high-quality digital documents will be archived and presented via the Bavarian Multimedia Server, allowing Regensburg University Library to intensify the conservation of the physical holdings; at the same time, the digitized documents form the basis of a data transcription process and further analysis. The linking of persons, institutions and places to central authority files will open up rich opportunities for searching, data analysis for the integration of the data into other information resources. Basing the project on open standards and interfaces, we aim to make the use and re-use of the data as easy as possible. The data can easily be integrated into virtual research environments and other information resources, resulting in added value for the wider interdisciplinary scholarly community.

• DFG Programme: Cataloguing and Digitisation (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)
• Co-Investigator: Dr. Albert Schröder