In the age of global communication and the internet, the digitisation and facilitation of public access to Germany’s cultural heritage constitutes a major social challenge of significant import and immediacy. The German National Library is also committed to this cause and is rising to the challenge by carrying out a wide range of digitisation activities. The legal bases for these tasks are the Library’s legal mandate (see DNBG) and the Law Regarding the Use of Orphan and Out-of-Commerce Works (UrhGuaÄndG). Between 2021 and 2024, the financing available for digitisation measures is to be substantially expanded by special funds granted by Minister of State for Culture and the Media Professor Monika Grütters.

Digitisation strategy

Our digitisation strategy is an integral part of the German National Library’s overall strategy. The long-term goal from 2021 onwards is to make our analog collections fully accessible in digital format. The digitisation measures, which to date have been mainly selective, are therefore being gradually expanded to encompass systematic digitisation at both of the DNB’s locations.

Its objective is to protect and preserve original text, image and audio documents for long-term as part of Germany's cultural heritage. We also aim to improve visibility, access, the possibilities of using our collection for science, research, education and culture, and the options available to the interested public in Germany and abroad. We use the maximum scope permitted by copyright law when providing access to digitised objects.

At present, we are digitising works that can no longer be made available in the original because of their condition and, as part of the systematic digitisation process, monographs acquired in the years from 1913 and 1945. Since 2013 we have also been continually digitising the tables of contents of all newly deposited books and retrospectively digitising those from earlier years. Moreover, we have digitised more than 15,000 research monographs, address books and telephone books from our collection in cooperation with commercial partners.

Catalogue enrichment with digitised tables of contents

We routinely digitise the tables of contents of all books, journals and loose-leaf publications that are added to our collections, and also perform this task retrospectively, particularly in the context of projects. We currently provide access to more than 2.3 million digitised tables of contents, which are available through our catalogue and which we offer free of charge through our metadata services. Around 110,000 tables of contents from new monographic publications are added each year.

As part of a major project under way at our Frankfurt location, we are currently checking around 5.3 million books deposited between 1945 and 2012 to determine whether they have tables of contents besides digitising 2.7 million tables of contents. The use of OCR enables us to offer all tables of contents as searchable PDF files that are permanently linked with the metadata in our catalogue.

Why do we digitise tables of contents?

Our aim is to make literature searches in our library catalogue as convenient as possible. A click on the link to the digitised table of contents improves the quality of the literature search, while the search results facilitate an efficient evaluation of the contents of the publication required. By digitising the tables of contents, we are also increasing the global visibility of our book collections for scientific and cultural purposes, for reuse in the field of text and data mining and for other automated analytical procedures.

More information (only available in Geman)

Digitisation service on demand

Do you wish to have a work in the collection of the German National Library digitised? For a fee, our digitisation service on demand gives you the option of digitising printed media and accessing them in line with copyright regulations.

Additional information

Digitised collections

To date (as of the end of 2023), the German National Library has digitised 307.711 objects consisting of 23.177.006 pages as well as approx. 2,7 million tables of contents and 56.232 audio objects, for example

• Books and journals as part of the collection care work
• Systematic digitisation of book collections in Leipzig 1913 ff.
• Systematic digitisation of book collections in Frankfurt 1945 ff.
• Dime novel series
• Monographs from the exile collections
• Archival materials from the exile collections
• Wall charts and illustrative materials
• Flyers from the exile collections
• Exilpresse digital (Digital Exile Press – German-language exile journals 1933–1945) (further information)
• Jewish periodicals in Nazi Germany (further information)
• Books and archival documents from the World War I collection (further information)
• November revolution – digitisation of sources on the German revolution of 1918/19 (further information)
• Jan Tschichold's Estate (further information)
• 100 volumes of classic literature
• Phonograph cylinders
• Compact cassettes
• Other sound carriers
• “Melodrama, snide humour and parody”: shellac records of cabaret performances in the German National Library’s catalogue (further information)
• Distributed digital legal sources (further information)
• Telephone books
• Address books

Further information