Dear colleagues,

I would like to inform you that the second phase of the "Qalamos" project has begun and that we are now entering metadata of South Asian manuscripts held in Germany into the "Qalamos" portal from the Berlin State Library and the Bavarian State Library in Munich.

One of our central tasks is the retroconversion of the printed catalogues. This means transferring the meta-data into the Qalamos database. As the manuscript descriptions are very heterogeneous, especially in the old catalogues, our aim is to present the data in the Qalamos portal in a uniform and structured way. We use a minimum standard that includes the following data: Owner, signature, object ID, catalogue, volume, form type (e.g. pothi), language, script, dating, title and author. To ensure that no information is lost, the data records in Qalamos are successively linked to the digital copies of the catalogues, if available.

Another important aspect of our work is linking the data with each other and with standardised data, preferably from the Gemeinsame Normdatei (GND) or the Library of Congress (LoC). We create a work data-entry for important works. All manuscripts containing this work or parts of it, as well as commentaries or other adaptations, are then linked to this entry. This allows you to see at a glance where copies of this text or other related texts are available.

In Berlin, we start with the oldest part of the collection held in the Berlin State Library, the four-volume catalogue by Albrecht Weber. Our colleague in Munich is starting to record the Munich holdings with the catalogue of the Indologist Theodor Aufrecht.

At a later date, the data of the South Asian manuscripts recorded in the "KOHD-Digital" database will also be imported into the "Qalamos" portal.

This text is a summary of my blog post written in German: https://od-portal.hypotheses.org/2476

Link to Qalamos: https://www.qalamos.net/content/index.xed

Best regards

Anett Krause

Dr. Anett Krause

Orientabteilung – wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin
Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preussischer Kulturbesitz
Potsdamer Str. 33
D-10785 Berlin
Tel+49-30-266-432652

Anett.Krause@sbb-spk-berlin.de