Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek #relaunched: An interview with the management about relaunch 2023

A lot has happened since then and so we would like to follow up on the conversation from that time, talk to them about the planned relaunch of the German Digital Library, about the "Neustart Kultur (Restart Culture)" programme of the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, ask how they have perceived the past few years, what has changed and what the future holds.

Dear Dr Spohr, Dear Mr Dunkhase, you started in management at the German Digital Library almost at almost the same time the Corona pandemic hit (Editor's note: No correlation is implied). It was in many ways a time of upheaval. At the same time the foundation was laid for the current relaunch. Tell us about it – what do you especially remember from this time?

Julia Spohr: The fact that the emerging Covid-19 pandemic posed an uncanny threat, claimed countless lives worldwide and was not foreseeable in its outcome is a fact before which the rather uncomfortable effects on the hitherto normal working life seem almost insignificant.

For projects such as the German Digital Library, it was cynically a confirmation and affirmation, because the lockdowns made offers for digital cultural mediation incredibly important. This development, which was unforeseeable at the time, is fortunately sustainable. We all live and work in two worlds now, the hybrid is reality.

The fact that we succeeded in laying the foundation for the user-oriented redesign of the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek during this depressing time required a lot of strength under the conditions present then. I would like to thank the Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media very much for giving us the opportunity to do so as part of the "Neustart Kultur" funding programme. After just six months in office, I could hardly have imagined a better result in the summer of 2020 than this pioneering funding commitment.

Gerke Dunkhase: Corona was of course a massive turning point for each individual and for all of us together. From today's point of few, the last few years are seen as time before Corona, time during Corona and time after Corona. Even today I am amazed at the speed with which we have adapted to the new Corona world with its lockdowns, limitations on contact and constantly changing regulations. As a digital library with employees at nine locations, we may have had particularly good conditions to get a taste for the new virtual and hybrid forms of work. Nevertheless, it must be noted that we have managed this transformation excellently – not least because of the flexibility and creativity of all employees. The fact that the funding programme "Neustart Kultur" gave us the means to sustainably increase the attractiveness of the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek for our users was, of course, a great win for us in the face of all the terrible sides of the pandemic.

We were able to completely overhaul the portal itself thanks to the funds from the funding programme. Our main goals were improving usability and accessibility, expanding editorial offers and making the presentation of cultural objects more attractive. For example, we now have an image viewer that makes it possible to view high-resolution images in all details. The integration of 3D models is also planned for the future. All visitors to the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek's portal can look forward to a completely new user experience and are invited to rediscover the contents of the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek.

In our last interview in April 2020, many projects were currently in the making or recently online and we asked what you expect from them for the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek: the exhibition tool DDBstudio for virtual exhibitions, the Deutsche Zeitungsportal (German Newspaper Portal) and the portal for Sammlungsgut aus kolonialen  Kontexten (Collections from Colonial Contexts). How do you look at these projects today and where is the journey going?

Julia Spohr: I am amazed at what we as a team of the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek have achieved over the past three years. New, benchmark-setting offers have been created and they have proven to be incredibly successful. 

Around 200 virtual exhibitions have been created in the three years since the launch of our DDBstudio web tool. Since 2021, millions of newspaper pages from around 400 years of German history up to 1945 can be read online with the "Deutsche Zeitungsportal" and the online portal "Sammlungsgut aus Kolonialen Kontexten" creates transparency about corresponding holdings in German cultural institutions and enables dialogue with the respective societies of origin of these cultural assets at such a very necessary eye level. We are currently working on the further development of the currently visible prototype into a fully functional portal with stakeholders such as academic representatives from the societies of origin, participating pilot institutions in Germany and experts in the field of indexing data.

Archive portal D of the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, which has existed since 2015, is currently also home to immensely important projects for the digital provision of archive material: in 2022, the topic portal "Wiedergutmachung nationalsozialistischen Unrechts (Reparation of National Socialist Injustice)" was published in cooperation between the federal and state archive administrations and will be continuously expanded in the coming years. A digital thematic portal "Rechtsterrorismus (Right-wing terrorism)" to deal with the crimes of the "National Socialist Underground" (NSU) is emerging.

All these milestones carry responsibility. They sharpen the profile of the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek as an institution of cultural education and enable low-threshold participation in culture and knowledge in the digital space. We absolutely must be able to build on this and constantly expand our offerings, because the (digital) world is turning and the demands and expectations on us will not be less.

Gerke Dunkhase: The Deutsche Zeitungsportal and the sub-portal Sammlungsgut aus Kolonialen Kontexte were activated shortly after each other in the second Corona autumn of 2021. The Deutsche Zeitungsportal had an overwhelming response to the launch in the press, on social media and among users. In the meantime, the access numbers of the portal have evened out at a stable level and we're recording an above-average number of page views and long dwell times. The newspaper portal is therefore used intensively. We also know from enquiries and feedback that the portal is meeting with great interest, especially from the scientific community, but also from many interested citizens. Currently, more than one million newspaper editions are available on the portal, 89 percent of which are accessed via a full-text search. Our primary goal and the most urgent wish of the users is the expansion of the portal through more digitised historical newspapers. The basis of the press in Germany are and were regional newspapers, the more we make available digitally, the more attractive the use of the portal becomes. In addition, we are working on improving and expanding the functionality of the portal.

The subportal Sammlungsgut aus Kolonialen Contexten was realised in 2021 within only a few months as a beta version. Approximately 6,600 objects from 25 pilot facilities, primarily ethnological and natural history museums, are listed. We are currently working on a full version of the portal, which is intended to provide the greatest possible transparency for collections from colonial contexts in German cultural institutions. A special focus will be on a transparent presentation of the provenance history of the objects. In order to meet the international target group of the portal, the user interface is offered in three languages, initially in English, French and German. An extension to other languages is planned.

What aspects of your work over the past three years are you proud of? What can users of the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek look forward to in the future?

Julia Spohr: Before joining the German Digital Library in 2020, I worked as a contemporary historian on the reappraisal of both German dictatorships in Germany and most recently worked at the Stiftung Sächsische Gedenkstätten (Saxon Memorials Foundation) in memory of the victims of political tyranny. I have dealt intensively with questions of the mediation of dictatorship experiences and their importance for cultural education in a democratic society.

What particularly connects me to the goals of the German Digital Library is the free access to culture and knowledge online for all, which we always have in mind in our daily work. Here I see enormous potential for the success of an open, democratically negotiable discussion of our history. Having strengthened the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek as a place of cultural education fills me with particular pride. We should not only be THE culture search engine online, but also expand our valuable services in the field of cultural mediation - but that remains, as so often, a question of future resources. If this can be strengthened, our users will only benefit. 

Gerke Dunkhase: We can look back on three successful years. The Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek has continued to diversify. We have launched two new sub-portals, in the context of Archive Portal-D a thematic portal "Wiedergutmachung nationalsozialistischen Unrechts (Reparation of National Socialist injustice)" will be developed in the coming years, and the virtual exhibitions have been massively expanded. Last but not least, we have put the portal of the German Digital Library on new, future-proof legs with the relaunch. Of course, all this is not an end in itself, but serves the goal of making our cultural heritage accessible, experienceable and usable and thus keeping it alive. We want our users not only to receive the content, but also to actively use and shape the portal and its content. I could therefore imagine, for example, that we establish and expand offers in the area of "Citizen Science".

The major topics of the German Digital Library – making cultural heritage accessible, open cultural data, but also standardisation and standard data – will remain the major topics in the future? What will also be important for the development of the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek?

Julia Spohr: Of course, digitality determines our lives - individually, communally, regionally, nationwide, European, globally. Achieving digital availability of cultural heritage is one of many important building blocks to democratize culture and knowledge, the way to that is work in progress. The questions that have shaped and determined the construction and expansion of the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek from the very beginning continue to be influential and decisive. 

After important tasks of a technical, legal and systematic nature (keyword data standards) were decisive in the early years, the role of the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek as a virtual place of cultural education was to become much stronger in the future. Currently around 45 million digital cultural objects from 800 institutions nationwide speak for themselves – and want to be translated into comprehensible, diverse, varied offers and narratives.

Gerke Dunkhase: The topics mentioned will continue to have a central importance for the German Digital Library in the future. In addition, there are new topics and challenges. That data is the gold of the 21st century – to strive for an often used buzzword – has also arrived in the cultural and knowledge sector. In recent years, a wide range of new initiatives and projects have emerged, both at national and European level. I am thinking of the Data Room Culture, the National Research Data Infrastructure or the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage, to name just three examples. In addition, there is the current hype about artificial intelligence and ChatGPT. Maintaining the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek in this ecosystem of cultural and knowledge data, preserving one's own and integrating the new, will be a major task and challenge.

Final thoughts? 

Julia Spohr: Oh, I hope not in the conventional sense! Seriously: I would like to address the last words of our conversation with full verve to the inter-institutional team of the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek and as managing director of the areas of finance, law, communication and marketing, especially to the colleagues of the Berlin office. I enjoy and appreciate working with an incredibly motivated and expert team every day - in Berlin and at all locations of the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek. We are filling a central digital project of the federal government, the states and municipalities in the cultural sector with life every day – it can hardly be more beautiful!

Gerke Dunkhase: I would be delighted to join you in this!

Thank you for talking to us!

The questions were asked by Wiebke Hauschildt (online editorial team of the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek).