2024 - A Review

Dear users, dear partners and supporters of the German Digital Library, dear colleagues,

we find ourselves in a world that is characterised by political and social upheavals as well as by the struggle for sovereignty of interpretation(s). Our answer? We make cultural heritage available to everyone, with diverse perspectives on it and invite cultural institutions and users alike to share different perspectives on ‘their’ culture with us.

The overwhelming response at the Leipzig Book Fair 2024 showed just how attractive cultural heritage can be when it is freely accessible and free of charge. Our free offers, over 230 virtual exhibitions and the simple download option for cultural objects delighted our visitors: ‘Ah cool, there's no advertising at all!’, ‘You're good news for me!’ and ‘That's my discovery of the day today!’ are reactions that we naturally like to hear. We look forward to seeing you again in Leipzig in March 2025!

Our themed dossiers, which we have expanded again this year, offer very different approaches to culture. With ‘Back to the future’, you can cook, bake or knit according to historical sources. Or you can follow in the footsteps of hippos and unicorns and be enchanted by the history and cultural heritage of the animal world with our ‘Animal Cultural Heritage’. Because we want to provide exciting stories for users with different needs, we have expanded our inclusive offerings and increased their thematic diversity in plain language.

We are particularly pleased to be able to expand the area of education and mediation and offer new formats for younger users and teachers. We have worked together with cultural mediators and educational stakeholders and have also broken new ground in terms of communication.

Our programmes are also new and you can be part of them directly: From October 2024, we will be offering live guided tours of our virtual exhibitions with curators in our ‘Culture at lunchtime’ event series, which you can follow from the comfort of your computer, mobile phone or tablet. The next date is in January 2025 - we look forward to welcoming you!

If you would like to become active yourself, you are welcome to do so: tell us your story about cultural heritage and write articles or curate picture galleries about objects that you find in the German Digital Library - we will publish your contributions on our blog, because cultural heritage is there for everyone!

A lot has also happened with our subportals in 2024. Our subportal ‘Collection items from colonial contexts’ went online in the summer. It creates the basis for the greatest possible transparency about the whereabouts of collection items from colonial contexts in German cultural and knowledge institutions, enables dialogue with countries and societies of origin worldwide and therefore provides information in German, English and French. Our newspaper portal, which is already very popular, has been further expanded and can now boast new additional functions. Finally, our oldest subportal celebrated its 10th anniversary: congratulations Archive Portal-D! It also includes the thematic portal ‘Reparation for National Socialist Injustice’ initiated by the Federal Ministry of Finance, which for the first time brings together information on relevant files held by the federal government, the federal states, local authorities and other bodies. The portal thus provides important information on compensation and restitution practices in the Federal Republic of Germany and the GDR and assumes responsibility for coming to terms with Nazi injustice.

In our legal dispute with the collecting society (VG) Bild-Kunst, we were able to write the final chapter for the time being. Both sides have amicably agreed on a five-year test phase during which we will not have to take any technical measures against the framing of images by third parties and at the same time potential cases of framing will be uncovered.

Finally, the composition of our competence network changed in November. We would like to thank the Bremen State Office for Monument Preservation and warmly welcome the LVR Office for Monument Preservation in the Rhineland, which will now represent the Monument Preservation section in the German Digital Library.