Stack of historic bound volumes before digitisation

Digitisation projects for Stabi Berlin

Digitisation on demand, specialised information services and full-scale digitisation in accordance with DFG guidelines since 2012.

Open historic book on a Zeutschel overhead scanner during digitisation
An open laid book getting carefully digitised. Photo: BiblioCopy.

For many years, BiblioCopy has supported Stabi Berlin (SBB) in delivering demanding digitisation projects. Responsible handling of unique collections is always the priority, combined with modern technology, exacting quality standards and efficient project management.

Digitisation on demand (DoD) for valuable book collections

For more than ten years, BiblioCopy has contributed to Digitisation on Demand (DoD) at Stabi Berlin. This service enables users to request individual out-of-copyright works from valuable book collections in digital form. Careful handling protects the physical collection while providing fast and convenient access to the content.

DoD for specialised information services (FID) at research libraries

Since 2014, we have also supported specialised information services (FID) at research libraries with our digitisation services. This makes specialist literature sustainably accessible for research, regardless of location – an important contribution to the scholarly information infrastructure.

Full digitisation in accordance with the DFG practical guidelines on digitisation

Another focus is digitisation for the Stabi Berlin's Digital Collections. In this work, BiblioCopy follows the standards recommended by the German Research Foundation (DFG) in its practical guidelines. These guidelines ensure the highest standards, including:

  • Image quality and formats: Lossless master files (such as TIFF) and access copies in widely used formats (such as JPEG and PDF).
  • Metadata standards: Structured capture of technical, administrative and descriptive metadata for sustainable use.
  • Usability: Clear navigation and searchability to support efficient scholarly work.
  • Long-term archiving: Sustainable preservation and reproducibility through standardised processes.

This creates digital collections that not only meet today’s requirements, but also remain usable for research and the public in the long term.

Historic sources: ‘Parlamentaria Preußen’

One example project in 2022 was the digitisation of the historical volumes of the ‘Parlamentaria Preußen’, a series containing all session reports, printed papers and proceedings of the Prussian Landtag from 1921 to 1993. In addition to digitisation, BiblioCopy also carried out cataloguing the digital copies with basic structural metadata in Kitodo. This secured access to the digital copies and enabled convenient navigation within the sources – an important benefit for historical research.

If you would like to see the results for yourself, all digital copies are freely accessible to the public, either through the German Digital Library or directly in the Stabi Berlin's Digital Collections where they can be viewed.

BiblioCopy: your partner for complex digitisation

From digitisation on demand and full digitisation to the highest standards to the structured processing of historical sources – BiblioCopy is your experienced partner for professional digitisation projects.

Glossary

Briefly explained

Glossary

Technical terms from our digitisation projects briefly explained.

ALTO-XML

Standardised XML format for OCR results. It stores recognised text together with its position and page-layout information.

DFG practical guidelines

Quality and procedural recommendations issued by the German Research Foundation for digitising cultural heritage.

FID

Specialised information services provide individual academic disciplines with specialist literature and digital information resources.

Goobi

Open-source software for managing, documenting and quality-assuring complex digitisation workflows. Goobi and Kitodo originated in workflow software developed at Göttingen State and University Library from 2004 and have been developed as separate projects since 2016.

IIIF

Open standards for providing and displaying images and metadata from different collections in a consistent way.

Kitodo

Open-source software suite for producing, managing and presenting digital copies in libraries and archives. Kitodo and Goobi share their origins in workflow software developed at Göttingen State and University Library from 2004 and have been developed as separate projects since 2016.

Metadata

Structured information about a digital copy, such as its title, shelf mark, creator, date, rights, file format and page order.

OCR

Optical Character Recognition: automated recognition of printed text in image files for full-text search and further analysis.

Pagination

Capture and assignment of printed or handwritten page numbers to individual image files.

Structural metadata

Information about the internal structure of a work, such as chapters, articles, plates, supplements or page ranges.

TIFF

Lossless image format, often used for high-resolution master files and long-term archiving.

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