Science Dissemination Activities 2019 (Działalność Upowszechniająca Naukę - DUN)

Project realized in the period from 1.02.2019 to 30.10.2019

Science Dissemination Activities (Działalność Upowszechniająca Naukę - DUN) is a project financed by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education. Its goal is the realization of tasks supporting the development of Polish science through its dissemination, promotion and popularization. As part of funding from the DUN project, resources are available for research libraries for, inter alia, the development and dissemination of electronic information regarding scientific collections of libraries as well as for publishing activities. The University Library is realizing tasks under the DUN project since 2014. In 2019 the Library received further financial support for the realization of as many as 5 tasks in the field of cataloging library materials and digitization, as part of the agreement No. 771/P-DUN/2019. The project was realized from February 1st to October 30th, 2019.

Task 1

Pre-war humanities periodicals from the Wroclaw University Library - enlargement of the computer catalog with bibliographic descriptions of the periodicals from the former City Library and the so-called German concentration

This task was realized by a team of employees from the University Library's Serials Department and focused on the computer cataloging of the valuable, pre-war German periodicals collections. Wroclaw University Library has the largest post-German collections in the country (both books and periodicals) that has been preserved and protected against war damage, as well as from shipping out and theft. The pre-war humanities periodicals from the Wroclaw University Library orginate from three main sources: the former City Library, the former University Library and from other libraries, not only Silesian, secured in Lower Silesia region after the war (so called "German concentration", restricted collections).

Up to 1939, the City Library was the largest city library in Germany. Its collections have survived Second World War and today enrich the humanist collections of the Wroclaw University Library. These collections mainly represent following fields of science: history, social sciences, law, philosophy, pedagogy, art with musicology and history of natural sciences, as well as they document the activities of various organizations and scientific societies (their statistics and reporting on research).

Major parts of the collections from the former University Library were destroyed. Collections that have survived focus mainly on law and religion issues, from different countries, including non-European ones.

Collections from various libraries, not only Silesian, but secured in Lower Silesia region, are multilingual publications from history, literature and art history.

Aim of that project was to catalog 120 titles of pre-war periodicals, create for them bibliographic and items records as well as authority files.

Task 2

Portrait in the Wroclaw University Library - dissemination of sources by cataloging and digitizing images of European individuals and famous persons as contributions to research and sharing knowledge of the art of portraiture from the 16th to the 20th century

The second task realized as part of the project Science Dissemination Activities was to process in the Dublin Core program and then make them available in the Digital Library images of famous persons, engravings, portraits, also anonymous persons, that are basic source of knowledge for specialist research in the field of everyday life, costume design and material culture of various groups of European communities from the 16th to the 20th century, including Polish and Silesian. This collection gives the opportunity to search according to chronological, stylistic, provenance and many other criteria.

Discovering origins of individual portraits and their sets from library (e.g. former City Library in Wroclaw - Stadtbibliothek zu Breslau), museum (e.g. Regional Museum in Lwowek Slaski), official (City Archives in Wrocław) and private collections, will provide valuable materials for the researchers of collecting and individual collections, not only from Silesia. Thanks to obtaining ministerial funds, employees of the University Library were able to achieve the objectives set out in this task.

Access from Digital Library to such a diverse resources is facilitated by numerous keywords in the Polish, English and German language versions, created to adapt to the standards of the "Leopoldin" database that is currently under development. Keywords apply to portraits, authors, genres, formats and photographic techniques, and also indicate origins from the old collections.

The library and museology practice indicates the recently growing interest in portrait as an illustrative material for scientific and popular science publications as well as exhibitions on various subjects.

The final effect of the work carried out using the ministerial funds is the publication of approximately 1,400 files of portraits of individuals and famous persons associated with Silesian region, archived and made available in the Digital Library of the University of Wroclaw.

Because the Digital Library of the University of Wroclaw is part of the Europeana digital platform, cataloged in the Dublin Core format and digitized materials will be easily searchable in the global network, especially with an extensive system of keywords in English and German that was additionally developed and added to the descriptions.

Task 3

The third task – making available library collections in electronic form, which was realized as part of the ministerial project Science Dissemination Activities, was to disseminate of valuable sources for research by digitizing unique newspapers from the Silesia - Lusatian collection of the Wroclaw University Library. A team of employees from the Wroclaw University Library's Digitization and Digital Services Department took care of microfilming, digitization and making the selected press available in the Digital Library of the University of Wroclaw. The main purpose of this task was to secure and present to the world valuable, historic collections from the Silesia - Lusatian collection. Obtained ministerial funds allowed for digitization and the secured collections are made available online in the form of digital files, thanks to which the originals are protected against damages.

For this task were selected five local periodiclas with unique research values, that are only found in the collections of the University Library in Wrocław and are not listed in the catalogs of German libraries: Landecker Stadtblatt. Öffentlicher Anzeiger für die Graffschaft Gkatz - newspaper published in Ladek-Zdroj, which covers in its scope the city of Ladek-Zdroj and the former Klodzko County, Landecker Stadtblatt und Nachrichten, newspaper published in Ladek-Zdroj, which covers in its scope the city of Ladek-Zdroj and the former Klodzko County, Anzeiger für Obernigk und Umgegend, which covers in its scope the city of Oborniki Slaskie and the surrounding area, newspaper Polkwitzer Stadtblatt. Wochen und Amtliches Anzeigenblatt für die Stadt Polkwitz und deren Umgegend as well as weekly published in Wroclaw by the Wroclaw Chamber of Craft (Handwerkskammer zu Breslau) - Schlesiens Handel und Gewerbe. Schlesisches Gewerbeblatt, Wochenschrift für den gewerblichen Mittelstand Schlesiens. Organ des Handelskammer zu Breslau which covers in its scope German Silesia area.

A large part of the newspapers from the Silesia - Lusatian collection, including the titles presented above, were printed from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries on acid paper, which over the years was self-destructing - it began to break and crumble. Viewing and accessing the content of the originals was significantly impeded, and moreover, when they were made available to users, new, irreversible defects arose. Trying to protect the valuable historical collection of the regional newspapers, the Library is systematically conducting protecting microfilming and scanning. Because of that kind of actions, safety of historic collections is increasing and at the same time, wide access to the content of articles, without having to share the originals with users, is possible. As the final result of the realized task about 40,000 described files were obtained, archived and made available in the Digital Library of the University of Wroclaw. High-quality digital images of the unique Silesian press, which are quickly and safely shared online, contribute to deepening knowledge about the history of the region.
More information: www.bibliotekacyfrowa.pl

Task 4

Silesian music scores from the 19th and early 20th century from the Wroclaw University Library's Music Collection Department is the fourth task realized as part of the Science Dissemination Activities project. Its realization consisted of a bibliographic cataloging in the Virtua system of 150 valuable printed Silesian musical scores from the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century orginating from the restricted collections from monastery and school libraries from Wroclaw and from the former City Library, that are currently owned by the Wroclaw University Library. The purpose of cataloging musical silesiacs, often of a unique nature, was to disseminate information on the works of composers related to Silesia and to present the activities of Silesian publishing houses that contributed to the development of the musical culture of this region.

Task 5

The last task realized as part of the Science Dissemination Activities project was titled: Heritage of the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek in Wroclaw - a scientific books from the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century as a source of information about the intellectual culture of the region. Enlargement of the WUL's computer catalog
Obtained ministerial funds allowed for cataloging of the 2,000 volumes of scientific books, that were published from the beginning of the 19th century to the 1930s.

For the ministerial project, numerous works from the fields of law, economics, natural sciences and philosophy were cataloged. A particular collection are academic dissertations from numerous universities in Germany, France and Switzerland as well as from Netherlands and Sweden. An important element of this collection are dissertations in the field of law, containing a broad discussion of the issues of both civil, family, commercial and agricultural laws in the context of Roman law. The cataloged collection indicates how big was the impact of the Roman law on the development of European legislation, and the reception of Roman law in modern science that was developed in universities.

Computer cataloging and making available to the public this book collection will allow for its much easier use in research and scientific inquiries. Increasing the availability of the Wroclaw University Library's resources will not only help specialists in the field of the history of Wroclaw, Silesia and European science, but also to a wider audience interested in the intellectual culture of the region. These collections are a valuable source of knowledge about the history of the 19th and early 20th century, which determines their significant cultural, historical, cognitive and scientific value. Due to this fact, their cataloging and inclusion in the Library's computer catalog became even more important.

A detailed subject cataloging will undoubtedly increase search possibilities and the entered records are available both in the Wroclaw University Library's (WUL) catalog and NUKAT electronic catalog, and thus can be used by individual readers as well as by other libraries in their local databases.