The German Horticulture Library in the University Library of the TU Berlin is Germany’s largest specialist library for garden literature. From 2019 to 2021, BiblioCopy digitised historical nursery and plant catalogues from the 19th and 20th centuries.
Project period
2019–2021
Collections
Nursery and plant catalogues
Services
Scan, OCR, web edition
Making historic horticultural culture searchable
The catalogues document plant ranges, breeding, design and trade history. They are valuable sources for horticulture, botany, cultural history and historical biodiversity research.
- high-resolution digitisation of historical prints
- OCR for full-text search
- File formats for long-term preservation and online presentation
- Quality control for typographically and visually complex pages
Protection of originals, access to content
The online presentation provides access to rare catalogues from anywhere while reducing the need to handle the often delicate originals.