Historical treasures in good hands

When the former WDG building was vacated in 2016, the question arose as to where to put the historical books, some of which were in poor condition. After interim solutions at Johannisberg, on the Hardt and thanks to mediating contacts from the Bergischer Geschichtsverein and the school of humanities and cultural studies at Wuppertal University, the works were finally given to the university library on permanent loan in 2017. Digitisation was quickly decided. "Even if the works are probably more of interest to historical researchers, we are delighted that our pupils will also be able to 'browse' through them in a contemporary way and perhaps be inspired by the almost 450-year-old tradition of their school," says Headmistress Claudia Schweizer-Motte.

Special scans protect fragile works

"The 71 books from the 15th to 19th centuries include many elaborately designed text editions of ancient Greek and Latin classics, as well as works by humanist authors and a map by the famous Duisburg cartographer Gerhard Mercator," says University Library Director Uwe Stadler, describing the content and scope of the former school library. In contrast to the scanning of everyday documents, the mostly large-format and damage-prone volumes were scanned using a particularly gentle process and special hardware. A content structure created for each digital document in the NOAH viewer makes it easier to navigate through the folios, some of which are several hundred pages long and differ from the familiar organisation of today's printed works. A full-text search is also possible.

Knowledge digitally and locally accessible at any time in the future

The so-called "digital copies" that have now been created are of high quality; the numerous special features they contain are also easily recognisable: ownership entries or handwritten annotations from earlier centuries are of particular importance for research into the history of Bergisch education and science. But even in the digital age, there is still interest in the originals, for example for research questions about the materials used. Interested parties can still order the desired volumes for inspection in the reading room via the library catalogue. A pleasing result - for everyone involved. "On behalf of the entire school community, we would like to thank everyone involved in this project for the excellent and certainly growing collaboration with the University of Wuppertal," says the committed headmistress.

The digital collection "Historische Schulbibliothek des Wilhelm-Dörpfeld-Gymnasiums" is available on the open access portal NOAH.nrw.