The research library at the Leibniz Institute for Educational Media | Georg Eckert Institute (GEI) began to digitise its collection of historic German textbooks for selected subjects in 2009. The GEI’s aim is also to bring together as many textbooks as possible that are still available in libraries across Germany, although generally difficult to access, covering the period from the seventeenth century to the end of the period of National Socialism, and make them available online as fully searchable texts. The collections held by the GEI will be complemented by digitised textbooks available in other libraries. The process of digitisation also preserves the textbooks as cultural assets for the long term.

The digitisation project is currently focussing on copyright-free works published in the period between the emergence of the first textbooks in the seventeenth century up to the end of the First World War in 1918.

International, historic textbooks have also been digitised since the start of 2020 within the framework of the GLOBAL TEXTBOOK RESOURCE CENTER (GLOTREC) as a central, strategic measure to strengthen digitisation and internationalisation measures and applied inter and transdisciplinary research.

References

Anke Hertling, Sebastian Klaes (2022). Volltexte für die Forschung: OCR partizipativ, iterativ und on Demand. O-Bib. Das Offene Bibliotheksjournal / Herausgeber VDB, 9(3), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.5282/o-bib/5832

Anke Hertling, Sebastian Klaes (2022): Lesebücher und ihre digitale Transformation. In: Christian Dawidowski, Florian Eickmeyer: Die Darstellung des Islam im Kaiserreich. Historische Lesebuchforschung mit digitalisierten Quellen. [Beiträge zur Geschichte des Deutschunterrichts]. Frankfurt a. Main: Lang, S. 34-46.

Anke Hertling, Sebastian Klaes: Historische Schulbücher als digitales Korpus für die Forschung. Auswahl und Aufbau einer digitalen Schulbuchbibliothek. In: Maret Nieländer and Ernesto William De Luca (Eds.): Digital Humanities in der internationalen Schulbuchforschung. [Eckert. Expertise 9]. Göttingen: V&R unipress 2018. p. 22-44. https://repository.gei.de/handle/11428/296

Anke Hertling, Sebastian Klaes: GEI-Digital als Grundlage für Digital-Humanities-Projekte. Erschließung und Datenaufbereitung. In: Maret Nieländer and Ernesto William De Luca (Eds.): Digital Humanities in der internationalen Schulbuchforschung. [Eckert. Expertise 9]. Göttingen: V&R unipress 2018. p. 45-68. https://repository.gei.de/handle/11428/296