institut d’études médiévales
Mediaevistisches Institut
MEDIEVAL INSTITUTE

CH-1700 Fribourg • Miséricorde • Büro 4123 • Tel. 026 300 7915 • Fax 026 300 9700 • e-mail: iem@unifr.ch • www.medieaevum.unifr.ch

Freiburg, 06.10.2006

An den Ministerpräsidenten
des Bundeslandes Baden-Württemberg
Staatsministerium Baden-Württemberg
Richard-Wagner-Str. 15
70184 Stuttgart

Concerne: Dispersal of the Karlsruhe library

Dear Mr. Oettinger,


We are participants in a workshop for postgraduates specialised in medieval studies, arranged by the Medieval Institute in Fribourg (2.- 6.10.2006), students and professors from Switzerland, Belgium, Denmark, England, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania and the United States. We have followed the events of the last weeks relating to the fate of the manuscript collections in Karlsruhe with dismay, -with dismay that it is possible in the year 2006 for the government of a modern state even to envisage the breaking up of a historical collection of books and documents which, as an ensemble, provides a major source for our understanding of German and European history.

Our information is that if these books were dispersed by auction at least 20% and perhaps as many as 40 % would no longer be available to scholarship. The dispersal of the Karlsruhe library would represent a major loss for the history of a region which lost many of its historical sources when the German troops bombed the Strassburg library during the Franco-Prussian war in 1870. The Karlsruhe manuscripts are a source of incomparable value as individual items, in their cross-relations with one another, and as a historical entity with symbolic value for the identity of the region, as well as their value to scholarship. We know of no comparable act of cultural depredation in a western country in modern times and fear for the precedant such an act would set to countries with less stable democratic traditions.

Prof. Hugo O. Bizzarri (Fribourg), Prof. Sten Ebbesen (Copenhagen), Prof. Christoph Flüeler (Fribourg), Prof. Franco Morenzoni (Geneva), Prof. Nigel Palmer (Oxford), Prof. Carlos Steel (Louvain), Prof. Loris Sturlese (Lecce), Prof. Tiziana Suarez-Nani (Fribourg), Dr. Kristi Viiding (Tartu), Emmanuel Babey (Neuchâtel), Arthur Bissegger (Lausanne), Indrė Brokartaitė-Pladienė (Riga), Heidi Eisenhut (Zürich), Richard F. Fasching (Fribourg), Christa Haeseli (Zürich), Amy Suzanne Heneveld (Geneva), Stefan Häussler (Basel), Stefan Kwasnitza (Zürich), Claire Muller (Zürich), Janika Päll (Tartu), Martin Rohde (Fribourg), Damien Travelletti (Fribourg), Barbara Wahlen (Geneva).

Many thanks to Cronaca for spreading the word!

http://www.cronaca.com/archives/004613.html

Cultural suicide at Karlsruhe

This story has remained essentially invisible outside Germany, and I'm not sure why. It's been headline news there: a proposed selloff of 3500 of the 4200 medieval manuscripts -- many of them of the highest importance -- in the Badische Landesbibliothek of Karlsruhe. Worse, the money wouldn't even go to the library, or even to any public entity [...]

BTW: The Online petition is closed.

Here is a list of the relevant entries of ARCHIVALIA's "English Corner" on the Karlsruhe case.

http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/2743873/
http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/2739268/
http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/2731521/
http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/2720115/

http://www.resourceshelf.com/2006/09/30/european-archive-foundation-launches-free-digital-library-list-of-other-web-archives/

ResourceShelf has a very helpful list of Web Archiving projects.

Before we begin, please note that this is far from comprehensive list. It’s just a beginning. Many large web archiving projects (in many languages) are coming online all of the time. Plus, others already exist that we did mention in this first go around. In other words, more to come.

European Archive Foundation Launches Free Digital Library

The European Archive Foundation said Thursday it has launched its massive digital library of free music and film. The nonprofit organization collaborates with national libraries and other organizations to make non-copyrighted, or free-use material available to the public.

Direct to the European archive
At launch contents includes:
+ 22 British Government Public Information Films
+ Recordings (limited accesibility by region)
+ Web Pages and Sites
++ European Constitution Web Archive
++ UKGOV Weekly Web archive
Weekly collection of 11 UK government websites

Source: AP
Thanks to Peter Suber from Open Access News (essential reading, for the news tip).

Here’s a List of Some Other Web Archiving Projects
Remember, more to come.

+ Don’t Forget The Internet Archive is Full of Music, Film, Text, and Numerous Special Collections along with Essential Wayback Machine. Some of the special web collections include:
+ Hurricanes Katrina and Rita
+ Web Pioneers

+ Using Archive-It Technology from the Internet Archive, here are a few of the collections built so far using Archive-It. Learn about each of these archives and find links to many more on this page.

+ Anarchism
A collection of websites of anarchist organizations (groups, networks) around the world.
+ Canadian Labour Unions
+ Canadian Political Parties And Political Interest Groups
+ Canadian Political Interest Groups
+ Islamic Middle East
+ Latin American Government Documents Archive, LAGDA
The Latin American Government Documents Archive (LAGDA) seeks to preserve and facilitate access to a wide range of ministerial and presidential documents from 18 Latin American and Caribbean countries.
+ Archive Of Political Parties And Elections In Latin America
+ North Carolina State Government Web Site Archive
+ South Dakota, Legislative Research Council
+ Archive Of Venezuelan Political Discourse
+ Virginia State Government, Judicial Branch, Collection
Universities
+ Indiana University Web Sites
+ University Of Southern California Website Archive
University Of Toronto Web Archives
Learn about each of these archives and find links to many more on this page.

+ 2004 Presidential Term Web Harvest
Note: Keyword searchable using Nutch software.

The 2004 Presidential Term Web Harvest is a National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) project that produced a collection of federal web sites copied, or harvested, from the world wide web between 10/14/04 and 11/19/04. The Heritrix web harvester and a list of 982 active and unrestricted second level URLs were used to capture all linked federal sites down to the fourth level. Those initial 982 “.gov” and “.mil” URLs were provided by U.S. General Services Administration’s (GSA) “.GOV” Internet Domain Registry and the Defense Information Systems Agency (DOD/DISA)…The harvest collection contains approximately 6.5 terabytes of information, roughly 75 million web pages and represents about 50,000 “.gov” and “.mil” unrestricted federal web sites active between 10/14/04 and 11/19/04.

+ MINERVA (Mapping INternet Electronic Resources for Virutal Archive (via LC)
Web Archives Available:
+ 107th Congress
December 12, 2002
+ Election 2002
Jul. 1, 2002 - Nov. 30, 2002
September 11, 2001
Sep. 11, 2001 - Dec. 1, 2001
Election 2000
Aug 1, 2000 - Jan 21, 2001

+ White House Web Site “Snap Shots” (via Clinton Library)
1994, 1999, 2000, Late 2000-2001 (Final Days), White House Virtual Library (1993-Mid Jan 2001)

+ Australia, Pandora Archive (via NLA and Partners)

Australia’s Web Archive

PANDORA, Australia’s Web Archive is a growing collection of copies of Australian online publications, established initially by the National Library of Australia in 1996, and now built in collaboration with nine other Australian libraries and other cultural collecting organisations.

+ United Kingdom Web Archiving Consortium

Despite our apparent dependence on this medium very little attention has been paid to the long-term preservation of websites. Indeed, with the life of an average website estimated to be around 44 days (about the same lifespan as a housefly) there is a danger that invaluable scholarly, cultural and scientific resources will be lost to future generations. To address this problem, a consortium of six leading UK institutions is working collaboratively on a project to develop a test-bed for selective archiving of UK websites. View the project timeline here.

+ Books: Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web (via George Mason University, Center for History and New Media

A book that provides a plainspoken and thorough introduction to the web for historians who wish to produce online work, or to build upon and improve the projects they have already started.

September 22, 2006

To the editor:

It is difficult to convey our shock, astonishment and dismay at the still barely believable news of the scandalous plan to sell the vast majority of the manuscript holdings -- some 3500 out of a total of 4200 volumes -- of the Badische Landesbibliothek in Karlsruhe in order to permit the house of Baden to pay off its debts and restore its last remaining residence at Salem. Other nations, for example, the United Kingdom, have found ways, through instruments such as the National Trust, to strike a balance between preservation and private property rights. Due, in part, to Dostoevsky, Baden-Baden, former residence of the Markgräfliches house, remains known around the world as the site of a now insignificant casino, but who would have thought that the government of Baden-Württemberg would turn out to be the biggest gambler of all? All other considerations aside, there is no way that the market could absorb so many manuscripts, many of them incomparable treasures, within a short span of time. It is therefore to be feared that a great many will be sold at prices that in no way reflect their real monetary value. Financial folly aside, with this act, arrived at in secret, without, apparently, proper public debate or review, one of the world’s greatest collections, in many respects an incomparable record and repository of over a millennium of European monasticism and memory, including, inter alia, major monuments in the history of art, literature, theology, mysticism and music, will be dispersed and destroyed. Books that have been conserved, catalogued, and exhibited (at considerable public expense) will end up God knows where. Many will disappear into private collections, becoming inaccessible to students, scholars and any wider public of culturally and historically-minded individuals. Historical collections -- monastic libraries assembled over centuries -- will be scattered, making it all but impossible to study them in systematic or a coherent fashion. Other books (perish the thought), having survived the Thirty Years War, the Napoleonic invasion, secularization, and two World Wars, will be broken up, made victims of the market -- and for what? To preserve, in apparent violation of due democratic process, let alone the public interest, the dignity of an overstretched aristocratic family.

A library is more than just a collection of books. It is a storehouse of memory, or better put, it is a resource that makes the work of memory, history and cultural self-consciousness possible in the first place. In WWII, despite the collection having been put in storage for safe-keeping, most of Karlruhe’s holdings -- some 360,000 printed volumes -- were annihilated by bombardment. Other great libraries, from Alexandria to Sarajevo and the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek in Weimar, have been lost due to accidents, vandalism or violence. Are we now to add Karlsruhe to this list of disasters? If so, it will have a place of special distinction, for in this case, a great library will have been destroyed, not accidently, but rather at the hands of the very people entrusted to protect it. It would be one thing if the collections in Karlsruhe were of no more than antiquarian interest, important only within a local or, at best, a regional setting. Even under these circumstances, their dispersal would be a scandal. Throughout the Middle Ages, however, and beyond, the Upper Rhine was a cradle of civilization, a major locus of European urbanism, a highway between north and south, in short, a driving force in European history. The sale of Karlsruhe’s manuscripts will be registered round the world as a clear signal that in Germany, the past is for sale -- and at bargain-basement prices. In selling off such treasures, the government of Baden-Württemberg makes a mockery, not only of democratic process, but also of its commitments to education, culture and the public good.


Yours sincerely,


Prof. Dr. Jeffrey F. Hamburger, History of Art & Architecture, Harvard University

Mitunterzeichnet von:
Prof. Dr. Ann Blair, History, Harvard University
Prof. Dr. Caroline Walker Bynum, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
Prof. Dr. Walter Cahn, History of Art, Yale University
Prof. Dr. Margot Fassler, History of Music and Liturgy, Yale University
Prof. Dr. Roberta Frank, English, Yale University; President, Medieval Academy of America
Prof. Dr. Carmela Vircillo Franklin, Classics, Columbia University; Director, American
Academy in Rome
Prof. Dr. Rachel Fulton, History, University of Chicago
Prof. Dr. Patrick Geary, History, University of California, Los Angeles
Prof. Dr. Thomas F. Kelly, Music, Harvard University
Prof. Dr. James H. Marrow, Art & Archaeology, Princeton University; Fitzwilliam Museum,
Cambridge; President, Medieval Manuscript Society
Prof. Dr. E. Ann Matter, History, University of Pennsylvania
Prof. Dr. Robert Nelson, History of Art, Yale University
Prof. Dr. Thomas F. X. Noble, History; Director, Medieval Institute, University of Notre Dame
Prof. Dr. Nigel F. Palmer, Medieval German, Oxford University
Prof. Dr. Ken Pennington, Columbus School of Law, School of Theology and Religious Studies
The Catholic University of America
Prof. Dr. Robert Somerville, History, Columbia University
Prof. Dr. Nicholas Watson, English; Chair of Medieval Studies Committee, Harvard University
Prof. Dr. Anders Winroth, History; Chair, Medieval Studies Program, Yale University

Kindly provided by Jeffrey Hamburger

More on the case in English see the recent entries at
http://archiv.twoday.net/topics/English+Corner/

More than 2000 scholars worldwide have signed the protest letter at
http://cgi-host.uni-marburg.de/~mrep/brief/

Translation: http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/2731521/

If you would like to sign the Open letter, send an email to
kleink@staff.uni-marburg.de
subject: Open Letter
please include your full name, title, institutional affiliation.

*Manuscripts of the Badische Landesbibliothek, **Karlsruhe***

It has come to the attention of the Expert Group of European Manuscript Librarians, operating under the auspices of the Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche (LIBER), that the Government of Baden-Württemberg is planning to auction off large parts of the manuscript collection of the Badische Landesbibliothek in Karlsruhe which has been in public custody since the abolition of the Grand Duchy in 1918/19.

The LIBER Expert Group of European Manuscript Librarians recognises the unique significance of manuscript and archive collections, not only for the world of research and learning, but also for a wider audience of people interested in history and cultural heritage. The primary aims of the Group are to act as a forum for curatorial concerns, and to enhance understanding and practical cooperation among curators across Europe.

As a group of manuscript curators we protest against the possibility of a 'diaspora' of manuscripts which are not only an important part of the German cultural heritage but as such also part of the common European cultural tradition. The manuscripts now held in Karlsruhe have been collected over centuries, have been kept in the Landesbibliothek for decades, and have been catalogued after World War II with DFG-funding. Although the juridical ownership of these manuscripts seems to be disputed, we urge the government of Baden-Württemberg to do its utmost to try and keep this historical collection together, accessible to the international scholarly community.

Dr. A.Th. Bouwman

Chairman, Expert Group of European Manuscript Librarians, LIBER
[Keeper of Western manuscripts
Leiden University Library]

Dr Bernard Meehan
Acting Secretary, Expert Group of European Manuscript Librarians, LIBER
Keeper of Manuscripts
Trinity College Library, University of Dublin

Rebecca LR Garber
an MEDTEXTL

Apologies for cross-posting:

Included below are a translation of an article from NZZ-Online in
Zürich, and an open letter that the German academics are sending to the
government and news media on Friday. The article includes information
about which mss are to go on the block, and why. The PM of Baden has
excused this action today by claiming that the uproar has only been in
the cultural pages of the media, but not in the financial sections
(which apparently proves that it makes good financial sense).

All translations are mine: I accept responsibility for any
discrepancies from the German that the English may convey.

sincerely,
Rebecca LR Garber, PhD
Freelance Translator

NZZ-Online (Neue Züricher Zeitung)

Philistines in Baden
End-of-Season Manuscript Sale in Karlsruhe

Evil news is heard from Baden-Württemberg. A bad case of governmental
philistinism afflicts the state at present. To the horror of
librarians, historians, patriots and citizens, the MP and the
hereditary arch duke of Baden have agreed to hock the unique collection
of manuscripts held in the State Library of Baden in Karlsruhe. To be
disposed of are all works acquired prior to 1872. At that time, the
archducal library was placed under the control of the Baden
Innenministerium (Department of State, internal affairs). This
protects volumes bought later from the princely claims of possession,
but not, however, works of art such as the prachtmanuscripts: an
illuminated book of hours of Archduke Christoph I of Baden (1490), the
Gospel of St. Peter (ca. 1200) or the medieval lectionaries from the
scriptorium of the monastery at Reichenau. They are threatened with
being scattered to all corners of the globe.

70 million euros, that is the requirement, has to be brought in by this
sale. A sum that can only be achieved by a rigorous plundering of the
3500 volumes of the entire manuscript collection. From the anticipated
proceeds, the preservation of the castle Salem, the last castle
remaining in the possession of the financially irresolute house of
Baden, will be ensured. The archduke will receive approximately 30
million as compensation for the expenditures (on the castle) in
previous years, the remainder is held in a trust to ensure
(maintenance) of the castle. In return, the heirs of the last Archduke
of Baden, who was forced to abdicate in 1918, will abjure “for all
time” from demanding the return of former archducal collections from
the state. MP Öttinger justifies the agreement by reference to the
legal battle, in which the state and the archducal family have been
entangled for some time.

According to the representation of those responsible, this business
deals with a responsible appreciation of the values of the goods: on
the one hand, the old manuscripts, which, as has been sufficiently
proven, are only accessible to a few experts; on the other hand, the
castle Salem, a wonderful building complex with its own gothic Minster.
Why do we call the whole thing Philistinism? Because one simply does
not sell manuscripts of this value and history. It is also the
construction of Philistines, to finance the maintenance of castle Salem
solely from the interest from the trust. The influx of capital
required for that demands, above all else, the initially ruinous
manuscript sale. But the government in Baden-Württemberg is concealing
this.

Joachim Günter

***

Open Letter

Honorable Ministerpräsident,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

with disbelief and horror we have learned, that the state government
intends to completely divest itself of the medieval manuscripts held in
the State Library of Baden in Karlsruhe. In a barbarous act beyond
compare, a central portion of the cultural inheritance of the state
will be stolen.

The majority of manuscripts in question come from the libraries of
monasteries in the Black Forest, the Upper-Rhine, and Lake Constance.
They document a unique path of spiritual life in this region, and how
it developed. With few exceptions, these manuscripts arrived in the
care of the state 200 years ago during the secularization, which
expropriated the monastic libraries. Since that time, they have been
conserved and made available to the public under considerable
application of technology and public means. This sale will scatter
them to all ends of the globe. The increasing connections made between
items in the collection will be torn asunder and many of the
manuscripts will be accessible only with great difficulty, or not at
all. This will be a second expropriation.

As scholars, who are engaged in researching and analyzing medieval
manuscripts, we appeal to you as the responsible parties in government
and parliament: Do not inflict upon the State, whose citizens selected
you as their representatives, irrecoverable damages! Distance
yourselves from these disastrous plans!

If you would like to sign the Open letter, send an email to
kleink@staff.uni-marburg.de
subject: Open Letter
please include your full name, title, institutional affiliation
Email addresses will not be disclosed. Dr. Klaus Klein will add all
names to the open letter, to be sent to the governement and news media
on Friday.

The petition list is closed. More than 2500 scholars and members of the public have signed

English information on the case

http://listserv.uiuc.edu/wa.cgi?A2=ind0609&L=medtextl&T=0&P=11816

Rebecca LR Garber:

This came from our medieval colleagues in Germany. I have included the
original post, which includes the article from the Stuttgarter Zeitung,
because I can not find an English reference to this atrocity on the net.

In summary:
The house of Baden in Germany has fallen on hard times, and has decided
that, in order to pay for renovations to the family castle in Salem,
that they will sell a number of paintings, coins, and manuscripts to
raise 70 million Euros.

The manuscripts are currently housed in the Badische Landesbibliothek
in Karlsruhe, where they have been available to scholars, and are
considered part of the European cultural heritage. The director of the
collection found out *in the public press* that his collection was to
be sold piecemeal to the highest bidder.

There is some debate as to who actually owns the collection, the family
or the state of Baden-Württemberg. This is keeping the lawyers busy,
but may not keep the manuscripts safe.

Among the manuscripts at risk:
The Book of Hours belonging to Christoph 1 of Baden, and the prayer
book of Susanna von Brandenburg-Ansbach-Kulmbach. This collection also
includes the manuscripts from religious houses secularized in 1803,
including the collection from Reichenau, which includes mss from the 11thC.

See also
http://listserv.uiuc.edu/wa.cgi?A2=ind0609&L=medtextl&D=0&T=0&P=19259

List EXLIBRIS
http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byform/mailing-lists/exlibris/2006/09/msg00273.html
Message from Bettina Wagner

Sharp-L
https://listserv.indiana.edu/cgi-bin/wa-iub.exe?A2=ind0609&L=sharp-l&T=0&P=14723
Message from Bettina Wagner

A&A list
http://forums.archivists.org/read/messages?id=238
Message from Klaus Graf

http://fairuse.stanford.edu/commentary_and_analysis/2006_08_hirtle.html

Digital Access to Archival Works: Could 108(b) Be the Solution?

By Peter B. Hirtle
Abstract

Section 108(b) of the Copyright Law, which deals with unpublished works, is often described primarily has a “preservation” clause, with its primary purpose being to ensure that our manuscript heritage is not lost. A closer look at the legislative history of the section, however, reveals that Congress was primarily concerned with increasing scholarly access to unpublished materials. Limited distribution to other libraries and archives to enhance research access to the original materials, it concluded, does not compete with the copyright owner’s right to commercially exploit the work. Under the original section 108(b), there were no limits on the number of copies that could be made for deposit in other repositories. Today digital technologies could provide a means of providing access to research materials without having to distribute physical copies to other repositories (though distribution of copies for preservation purposes would still be desirable).

English message:
http://forums.archivists.org/read/messages?id=238

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=nationalarchives&l=commderiv

All these pictures have a Creative Commons license which allows derivative works and commercial use!