Heidelberg University Library

History

Heidelberg University Library is the oldest university library in Germany. Its origin coincides with the founding year of the University of Heidelberg in 1386. Its roots trace back to the purchase of a chest of documents by the first Rector Marsilius von Inghen in 1388, which was stored in the Heiliggeistkirche. The library was initially built up through book donations from bishops, chancellors, and early professors. Louis III willed his large and valuable collection to the university, as did the Fugger of Augsburg. Otto Henry, Elector Palatine, combined the university's libraries in the 16th century, thus creating the Bibliotheca Palatina. After Heidelberg was conquered by Tilly in September 1622 during the Thirty Years War, the victorious Maximilian I, Elector of Bavaria donated the Bibliotheca Palatina to Pope Gregory XV. More than 3,700 manuscripts and approx. 13,000 pamphlets were brought to the Vatican in Rome. Several manuscripts dating from the 10th to 18th century from the libraries of the secularized monasteries Salem and Petershausen constituted the basis for the reconstruction. Efforts to recover the Bibliotheca Palatina led to a partial success in 1816: 847 German manuscripts from the Vatican and some Latin and Greek works came back from Paris to Heidelberg. In 1888 the Codex Manesse, which was at that point located in the Royal Library in Paris, returned to Heidelberg as part of an exchange.

Specialized information services

Within the framework of the cooperative system of national literature and information supply funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), the Heidelberg University Library oversees the specialized information services (FID) for Egyptology, Classical Archaeology, European Art History up to 1945 and General Fine Arts Studies as well as South Asian Studies. The library is tasked with collecting the German and foreign scientific literature for these departments as exhaustively completely as possible, indexing it and making it available via interlibrary loan.

The goal of the DFG-funded specialized information services is the recording of scientific information without media discontinuity – and, if possible, ensuring that direct access is provided. One element is the meta-search via specialized catalogs and databases. The specialized information guides make technically relevant, and high-quality internet sources accessible. Historical collections are gradually being digitized and offered freely via the specialized portals.

The electronic library includes over 152,000 full-text e-journals, 3,800 databases and around 850,000 e-books. A large part of the 6.2 million media in the library system is registered in the online catalog HEIDI. The Heidelberg University Library conducts a digitization center. Parts of the historical inventory are digitized using specially made book tables (Grazer Buchtisch). All manuscripts of the Bibliotheca Palatina are available online as digital copies on the Internet (848 German-language Palatina manuscripts, 2,030 Latin, 423 Greek, 267 Hebrew and 20 manuscripts in other languages). The digitization of the German and Latin codices of the Bibliotheca Palatina was funded by the Manfred Lautenschläger Foundation. The Heidelberg University Library and the Vatican Library collaborated on the digitization. A sub-project was the virtual reconstruction of the Lorsch monastic library.

The Heidelberg document server heiDOK is an open access platform that offers members of the university the opportunity to publish on the web free of charge. The multimedia archive, which is based on the EPrints system, is DINI-certified. On the basis of the Open Journal Systems software, it is also possible to create and manage e-journals. With heidICON, the university library provides a central object and multimedia database for the University of Heidelberg. The university bibliography heiBIB lists all academic publications by members of Heidelberg University. In 2015, the University of Heidelberg founded the publishing house Heidelberg University Publishing – heiUP, which is part of the university library. The publisher releases quality-controlled scientific publications in open access.