Digitalisierung der mittelalterlichen volkssprachlichen Handschriften

The library holds a collection of 74 medieval manuscripts written in the vernacular—on both paper and parchment—dating from the 12th to the 16th century. These form a subset of the library's medieval manuscript collection and cover a wide range of disciplines, including theology, philosophy, natural history, history, and law. Particularly outstanding items include, for instance, the *Göttingen Model Book* (*Göttinger Musterbuch*), which is renowned in the field of Gutenberg research.
 
As part of a project funded by the DFG (German Research Foundation), these manuscripts were cataloged between 2016 and 2020, and the descriptions were published in the manuscript database of the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel. This re-cataloging process has yielded important new insights into the provenance of the codices, their transmission history, and the production of medieval manuscripts.
The complete digitization of these valuable texts has yet to be carried out; only 20 of the 74 items have been digitized in recent years. This project involves digitizing the 54 medieval manuscripts in the vernacular held by SUB Göttingen that have not yet been digitized, and enriching both these and the 20 previously digitized manuscripts with metadata and structural data.
The 54 manuscripts, comprising a total of approximately 15,000 pages, are being scanned at the Göttingen Digitization Centre. Student assistants are capturing structural data for all 74 manuscripts, a process that entails converting information from the detailed XML descriptions in the manuscript database into the METS/MODS format. The entire digitization process—including structural data capture, quality control, and image post-processing—adheres to the DFG’s Digitization Guidelines.
The digitization of the manuscripts was made possible by the German Digital Library as part of the "Neustart Kultur" (Restart Culture) program, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM).