Project plan

Since 2022, Qalamos has provided scholars and the interested public with an infrastructure that enables direct access to metadata and digital copies of oriental manuscript collections in Germany. The aim of the continuation project "Qalamos", which follows on from the DFG project "Orient-Digital", is to bring together information and metadata on oriental manuscripts. In addition, the user-centred expansion of the "Qalamos: Connecting Manuscript Traditions" portal is ongoing. Over the next three years, the following three areas of work will take centre stage:

Retroconversion, Data Migration and Standardisation

The retroconversion of old catalogues will record the metadata of around 32,000 manuscript texts, with a focus on South Asian languages (including Sanskrit and Tamil). Work will also continue on Ethiopian, Coptic, Syriac and Armenian (Christian Orient) and Islamic manuscripts (Arabic, Persian and Ottoman Turkish). A further 25,100 descriptions will be added through the migration of the KOHD-Digital database. Ensuring good visibility and optimal reusability of the metadata and authority data recorded in Qalamos is a high priority. A key objective is the standardisation of the recorded data according to library standards. This includes reviewing, improving and generating authority data within the Qalamos application as well as in the Common Authority File (GND) of the German National Library (DNB).

Approximately 175,000 records of various authorities for more than 120,000 physical objects are held at various levels of indexing - documents in a total of 170 languages and 87 scripts (as of March 2024).

International orientation and integration of the research community

Qalamos already records holdings from international collections whose metadata and digital images have been created as part of research collaborations (Mauritania, Yemen, Indonesia, Austria). In the current phase of the project, internationalisation will be further developed at various levels - data import, retroconversion, authority records, networking. In particular, a standard workflow is to be established which, once the German collections have been entered, will enable the continuous import and efficient online processing of further data sets on a permanent basis.

The research-oriented focus of the portal will be further accentuated by the following aspects 1) a stronger commitment to authority data and an optimised connection to other ("authority") data repositories, 2) the improvement of provenance-related research options (data model for Geographica, visualisation of translocations), and 3) the further development of the IT infrastructure in relation to current research methods in the Digital Humanities. An individual focus on research requirements (e.g. integration of IIIF manifests, LOD exports, multilingual navigation) and a connection to semantic systems will be developed. The ongoing development process will be evaluated in a usability study in order to map the specific requirements of the research community.

More libraries as partners

In the current phase, many new institutions will be added as cooperation partners and existing collaborations will be continued in order to record their South Asian holdings in addition to the Islamic manuscripts. The current 26 institutions will be added to by a further 20 or more partners. This will bring us a major step closer to our goal of comprehensive cataloguing of Oriental manuscripts.

Current cooperation partners

• Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften
• Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin −PK
• Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Bonn
• Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden
• Universitätsbibliothek Freiburg
• Universitätsbibliothek der Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen
• Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen
• Forschungsbibliothek Gotha der Universität Erfurt
• Franckesche Stiftungen Halle/S.
• Universitäts-und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt Halle/S.
• Bibliothek der Deutschen Morgenländische Gesellschaft, Halle/S.
• Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg Carl von Ossietzky
• Gymnasium Christianeum Hamburg
• Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg
• Universitätsbibliothek Kassel, Landesbibliothek und Murhardsche Bibliothek der Stadt Kassel
• Universität zu Köln, Orientalisches Seminar
• Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig
• Deutsches Buch- und Schriftmuseum, Leipzig
• Universitätsbibliothek Marburg
• Benediktinterabtei St. Bonifaz München/Andechs
• Universitätsbibliothek Rostock
• Stiftung Monumenta Vitruvii Stützerbach
• Universitätsbibliothek der Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen
• Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel
• Städtische Museen Zittau
• Christian-Weise-Bibliothek Zittau

International collections

• Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Wien
• National Library of Finland
• Nusantara (Bestände indonesischer Institutionen und Privatsammlungen)
• OMAR (Oriental Manuscript Ressource) der UB Freiburg (arabische Handschriften aus Mauretanien)
• Koranfragmente aus der Großen Moschee in Sanaa (Sanaa, Dar al-Makhtutat)

MyCoRe database

The IT infrastructure of Qalamos is operated by the Computing Centre of the Leipzig University. Activities are carried out in close coordination with the Handschriftenportal, which is also funded by the DFG, in order to achieve the greatest possible standardisation of technical and library standards. Overall responsibility lies with the Oriental Department of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin - Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz.

The project team

Berlin
Stefanie Anton, M.A., Karin Druxes M.A., Dr. Yoones Dehghani Farsani, Dr. Thoralf Hanstein, Dr. Michaela Hoffmann-Ruf, Dr. Anett Krause, Dr. Friederike Weis, Beate Wiesmüller

Leipzig
Dr. Michael Becker, Jens Kupferschmidt

München
Ralf Kramer, Wolfgang Schmitt-Garibian, Dr. Gleb Sharygin, Dr. Thomas Tabery, Dr. Felix Wiedemann

General project management

Christoph Rauch

Project coordination / Contact

Dr. Michaela Hoffmann-Ruf
+49 30 266 435880
qalamos@sbb.spk-berlin.de

Dr. Anett Krause
+49 30 266 432652
qalamos@sbb.spk-berlin.de

Blog: „Alte Kataloge in neuem Gewand“

The Scientific Advisory Board

• Prof. Christoph Emmrich (University of Toronto, Department for the Study of Religion)
• Prof. Dr. Dragomir Dimitrov (Philipps-Universität Marburg, Institut für Indologie und Tibetologie)
• Yasmin Faghihi (University of Cambridge, University Library)
• Prof. Dr. Nathan Gibson (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Institut für den Nahen und Mittleren Osten)
• Dr. Till Grallert (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
• Prof. Dr. Konrad Hirschler (Universität Hamburg, Asien-Afrika-Institut)
• Prof. Dr. Verena Klemm (Universität Leipzig, Orientalisches Institut; SAW Leipzig (Bibliotheca Arabica)
• Dr. Philipp André Maas (Universität Leipzig, Institut für Indologie und Zentralasien-wissenschaften)
• Jonas Müller-Laackmann (Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg Carl von Ossietzky)
• Dr. Kathrin Paasch (Forschungsbibliothek Gotha)
• Birgit Seiderer (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München)
• Prof. Dr. Tilman Seidensticker (Universität Hamburg, Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures)
• Prof. Dr. Sabine Schmidtke (Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton University)
• Dr. Carolin Schreiber (Stabi Berlin, Abteilung für Handschriften und Historische Drucke)
• Prof. Dr. Ronny Vollandt (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Institut für den Nahen und Mittleren Osten)