Dear colleagues,
the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek has just launched a prototype of an internet database which provides access to the digitized illustrations of 75 selected incunables from its collection.
The prototype has been created during a project funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft which was carried out by the Centre dor Digitization of the BSB:
Digitisation of German printed book illustrations of the 15th century
The invention of printing in the 15th century not only revolutionized the transmission of literature of all kinds, but also promoted the presence of late Gothic art in many areas of life in the form of illustrated works.
This project intends to document this development and to make accessible the illustrations in books - which are often very attractive in terms of cultural history and aesthetics - both to scholars and to a general audience on the WorldWideWeb. Initially it is intended to digitize the illustrations of incunables printed in German-speaking countries from the collections of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. Most of these are black and white woodcuts, frequently with later colouring.
Searches will be possible by bibliographical data of the editions, based on the records of the Incunabula Short Title Catalogue (ISTC), as well as by attributes assigned to individual images, based on iconographical contents and themes. Thus, it will be possible to compare depictions of animals, plants or cities used by different printing houses as well as to search for illustrations by individual artists.
The bibliographical description of the incunables is based on BSB-Ink (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek : Inkunabelkatalog (BSB-Ink) [Red.: Elmar
Hertrich] Wiesbaden : Reichert . 4 vols. 1988-1998; vol. 5 in print) and ISTC. It is possible to either browse among the illustrated pages in order of their appearance in the printed book or to do specific searches for iconographical features which have been recorded using ICONCLASS; searches can be done systematically following the Iconclass structure or alphabetically by keywords. Captions have also been recorded.
The prototype is accessible under the following URL:
http://mdz.bsb.badw-muenchen.de:6336/digbib/inkunabeln
We are grateful for any comments on the functionality and contents of the database.
Please note that due to the size and number of images, access to the server can be slow.
Dr. Bettina Wagner
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek
Ludwigstr. 16
D-80539 Muenchen
Germany
email: [log in to unmask]
Tel. +89 / 28638-2337 (vormittags) bzw. -2262 (nachmittags)
postbox: D-80328 Muenchen
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