Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (German National Library)

The period from 1913 ff.
Cataloguing

The German National Library is the central archival library and national bibliographic centre for the Federal Republic of Germany. It was preceded by several institutions: the Deutsche Bücherei Leipzig founded in 1912, the Deutsche Bibliothek Frankfurt founded in 1947. The Deutsche Musikarchiv Berlin, which is a department of the German National Library in Leipzig, was founded in 1970. It will move to its new location, when the 4 ^th extension to the German National Library building in Leipzig is finished. On the occasion of the German reunification these institutions were brought together to form "Die Deutsche Bibliothek", which in 2006 obtained both an expanded legal mandate and a new name: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (German National Library). Its task is to collect, permanently archive, comprehensively document and record bibliographically without gap all German and German-language publications from 1913 on, Germanica and translations of works in German language published abroad as well as works by German emigrants that were edited between 1933 and 1945 and to make them available to the public.

Beyond the legal deposit instruction there are five historically grown special collections at the Deutsche Bücherei Leipzig (Reichsbibliothek from 1848, Sozialistica, Posters, Patent Depositories, Documents by International Organisations).

The German National Library currently holds around 23 million books, of which some 146 million are held in Leipzig, approx. 9 million in Frankfurt am Main and roughly 1.3 million by the Deutsches Musikarchiv.

The period from 1913 ff.

The Law regarding the German National Library (DNBG) which came into force on 22 June 2006 (BGB1 I p. 1338) lays down the duties and responsibilities of the German National Library. The Law distinguishes between media publications in physical form, conventional printed publications, and media publications in non-physical form, i.e. representations in public networks. This is in response to changes in the publishing world and to increasing demands from users. The Legal Deposit Directive (PflAV; BGBl. BGBl. I P. 2013) clarifies the legal right of the German National Library to be sent, free of charge and without a specific request being issued, publications falling within the collection brief, while exempting those which are of no public interest. Basically, the Law and the Directive lay down what the German National Library is to collect.

With this instruction for deposit established in law the German National Library takes on the object and aim of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Sammlung Deutscher Drucke for the period starting 1913 and it's - institutionally secured - continuation into the future.

Cataloguing

The collection of the German National Library is almost completely electronically indexed and can be searched via internet.

The German National Library's German Exile Archive 1933 - 1945 in Frankfurt am Main has carried out the project  Exilpresse digital. Deutsche Exilzeitschriften 1933-1945. There 30 selected periodicals and newspapers of the German speaking exile between 1933 and 1945 have been digitalised, indexed and afterwards made available online. Besides the pure scanning (with registration of the number and the day of issue of the periodical or newspaper) amongst other things the authors, titles, subtitles, translators of individual contributions have been listed in an index. Furthermore a full text search within the digitalised documents is possible.
When the selection of the item that were to be digitalised was made, care was taken to give a review of the exile press as comprehensive as possible both for the first and for the second phase of exile (1933 - 1940 respectively 1940 - 1945). The aim was also to give an exemplary account of all periodical groups that were issued in exile (politico-cultural and literary periodicals, scientific journals, periodicals of all major political parties in exile and ideological periodicals).
Another project of the German National Library's German Exile Archive 1933-1945 -  Jüdische Periodika in NS-Deutschland - was completed in 2006. Its aim was the digitization, subject indexing, and the presentation in the internet of the most important Jewish periodicals founded either shortly before or after the national socialist rise to power 1933. They are organs of the newly founded self help institutions of the Jewish community and as such they are the direct response to the persecution by the national socialist regime. For historical reasons, access to these important historical sources was only possible in a limited way and involved overcoming great obstacles. More than 20 newspapers and periodicals have been chosen after consultation with the DFG-project "Retrospective Digitization of Jewish periodicals published in the German speaking areas" ("Compact Memory").

Contact:

Angela Matthias
Deutsche Nationalbibliothek 
Head of the Department Acquisition and Descriptive Cataloguing
Deutscher Platz 1
04103 Leipzig

Phone: +49-341-2271-216
Fax: +49-341-2271-265