New publication: Colonial Contexts and Libraries

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The “IN_CONTEXT: Colonial Histories and Digital Collections”-project began its work at the Stabi in January 2023. In November 2023, the project team organised the workshop ‘Colonial Contexts in Libraries’  in cooperation with the dbv and the DZK in Berlin. The workshop marked the start of a series of activities to shed light on the topic of colonial contexts and libraries from a broad perspective. The idea of a guideline for dealing with colonial collections in libraries was also suggested here and the Colonial Contexts in Libraries working group was founded in the Colonial Contexts Network for this purpose. The first face-to-face meeting took place at BiblioCon2024 in June 2024.

Today we can report another milestone. o-bib has published the thematic focus ‘Colonial Contexts in Libraries’. In seven collaboratively written articles, colleagues from different libraries and fields of work have surveyed the field of colonial contexts in libraries and have taken different perspectives on the topic.

In their introduction, the coordinators of the thematic focus, Lars Müller, Michaela Scheibe and Larissa Schmid, outline the field of colonial contexts in libraries. They describe the current state of research and, based on this, define three main fields of action for libraries: collection development and indexing, provenance research and, finally, digitisation and ethical questions of collection representation.

The article coordinated by Jan Hüsgen and written by Irene Albers, Aïsha Othman, Meliné Pehlivanian, Thomas Richter and Schmid Andreas asks how the concept of colonial contexts can be applied to libraries.

The article, coordinated by Lars Müller and Michaela Scheibe, argues that provenance research on collections from colonial contexts is an important future field of action for libraries. In three case studies, Wiebke von Deylen, Hajo Frölich, Cordula Gumbrecht, Dominique Schwarb-Akoun and Jakob Wigand provide an insight into the challenges and opportunities of this work.

The article coordinated by Larissa Schmid looks at racism-critical approaches in library work. Case studies by Birgit Athumani Hango, Jantje Bruns, Birgit Kramreither, Maike Mewes and Moritz Strickert provide insights into the work of the Netzwerk koloniale Kontexte as well as the work of two different libraries.

Julia Zenker coordinated an article on the challenges of digitisation and the provision of materials from colonial contexts. Using case studies by Elke Brehm, Jana Kocourek, Karina Iwe and Anne Peiter, she argues in favour of a stronger integration of societies of origin.

The article coordinated by Romy Köhler follows on from digitalisation. Ingo H. Warnke, Maria Hermes-Wladarsch, Christoph Rauch and Stefanie Rühle provide different perspectives on the question of the role of metadata in creating transparency in the digital space.

The issue is complemented by an interview with colleagues from Cameroon, Kenya, Namibia and Sri Lanka. Albert Gouaffo, Werner Hillebrecht, Mutanu Kyany’a and Naazima Kamardeen offer different perspectives from the Global South on cultural assets that are relevant to them but held in German libraries and argue in favour of increased cooperation in this field.

 

We wish you an exciting read! If you have any questions on the topic, please feel free to contact the IN_CONTEXT project team at in_context@sbb.spk-berlin.de!

 

Link to the entire issue: https://www.o-bib.de/bib/issue/view/335

“We Are Our History” at the Stabi Berlin

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From May 14-16, 2024, the project IN_CONTEXT welcomed our colleagues Jasdeep Singh and Devika of “We Are Our History” (WAOH) at the Bodleian Libraries (University of Oxford) to the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (SBB). The project WAOH explores the Bodleian Libraries’ connections with the British history of imperialism and slavery. In addition to the collections of individual libraries of the University of Oxford, WOAH focuses in particular on working with the staff of the Bodleian Libraries and the wider community in the city of Oxford. Questions relating to acquisitions and a broader awareness of the close links between libraries, collections and the history of colonialism, moreover, are also important aspects of the project’s work. The exchange between the Bodleian Libraries and the SBB was made possible by funding from the Berlin University Alliance.

In Berlin, Jasdeep Singh and Devika were warmly welcomed by Julia Maas, Head of Reader Services, at the Potsdamer Straße branch of the SBB. The historical holdings on South Asia in the Oriental Department were of particular interest to WAOH. Before their arrival, Singh and Devika were able to discuss the history of the department and the holdings from colonial contexts with Christoph Rauch, Head of the Oriental Department. Colleagues Karin Druxes and Anett Krause from the DFG project “Qalamos” in Berlin made it possible to research catalogs of South Asian manuscripts on the SBB’s premises. In addition to the historical documents, it was also the designations and the classification of collections that drew the interest of our WOAH colleagues.

Foto im Stabi Lab der SBB mit "We Are Our History" und "IN_CONTEXT"

Devika, Larissa Schmid, Lars Müller, John Woitkowitz, and Jasdeep Singh. Photo: Emma Lesburgeres

In addition to working with the holdings of the Staatsbibliothek, it was a pleasure to bring together our colleagues  with other SBB staff and colleagues from the Special Information Service Social and Cultural Anthropology at HU Berlin, the NFDI4Memory, the Ada Lovelace Center for Digital Humanities (FU Berlin) and the Leibniz-Zentrums Moderner Orient. As part of a Stabi Lab workshop, we discussed topics related to the role of historical terms in the cataloging and classification of collections from colonial contexts. Which digitization priorities exist and which holdings are primarily accessible in digital collections? How can sensitive cultural objects be presented ethically and responsibly in digital collections?

Foto im Stabi Lab der SBB

Workshop “Stabi Lab Exchange with ‘We Are Our History’,” 15 May 2024. Photo: Emma Lesburgeres

In a Digital Thursday on May 16, 2024, Singh and Devika were also able to share the experiences and results of their project in Oxford with over 100 participants at the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. They also reported on their impressions of the SBB and their work with the catalogs of the Oriental Department.

A short excursion to a remnant of the Berlin Wall at Potsdamer Platz also provided an opportunity to discuss the recent history of the Stabi Berlin in a divided Germany. The visit made clear how history and the organization of knowledge are closely intertwined and continue to reverberate to the present day. A guided tour of the Unter den Linden building also provided an intriguing look behind the scenes of the library.

We would like to thank Jasdeep Singh and Devika for a wonderful visit and the stimulating discussions. We would also like to thank our colleagues at the SBB and our Berlin colleagues for their participation and support throughout the visit.

We look forward to learning about the work of “We Are Our History” and the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford during a return visit in July.

Digital Information Meeting: Research and Funding Opportunities in Germany

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IN_CONTEXT supports the digital meeting of the Network Colonial Contexts in Germany with a presentation about researching information in libraries. The aim of the meeting is to introduce the diverse and heterogeneous structural contexts in Germany, i. e. federalism, private and public funding organizations as well as individual programs that enable project participation or application by international project partners. On the one hand, participants will get the chance to learn about research tools in German institutions, museums, archives and on the other hand get an overview of the German funding landscape.

The Provenance of Literature – Joint seminar session with the FU Berlin

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The debate about provenance and restitution research is currently booming in museums – but the field is much broader, and some are already talking about a ‘provenancial turn’. While disciplines such as art history, ethnology, archaeology and book studies have developed methods of provenance research, questions of provenance in literary studies are still comparatively new. Andreas Schmid has therefore developed the seminar “The Provenance of Literature” at the Freie Universität Berlin.

In 2023, the project IN_CONTEXT: Colonial Histories and Digital Collections  researched the holdings related to colonial histories in the various departments of the Staatsbibliothek and identified, among other things, a number of papers belonging to civil servants, military personnel, researchers or people in general who travelled to or lived in European colonies. Among other things, the Stabi holds the papers of August Klingenheben (1886-1967), a linguist who focused his research on the Vai script/language and travelled to Liberia for this purpose. In addition to general research documents, his papers include collections of Vai proverbs and stories that have never been published in this form.

The Klingenheben papers in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, SPK

 

In a joint seminar session we discussed the handling of these archival materials. In the first part, we looked at the acquisition and collecting contexts of Klingenheben: To what extent can we speak of a colonial context? What was Klingenheben’s interest in collecting? What was his relationship to the informants? Etc. In a second part, we focused on the story “The Leopard’s Daughter” and compared different versions published later (1961, 1988, 2008). What are the features that remained the same in all the versions? What has changed? Is it still the “same” story? Etc. The final discussion was about how Klingenheben’s papers should be handled today. Is digitisation ethical? Should more data be added about Klingenheben as a person, the informants or the context of the collection? Should people in Liberia be consulted about the appropriate handling of the Vai stories? Etc.

 

Seminar: Die Provenienz der Literatur. Die Überlieferung von August Klingenheben, FU Berlin/Stabi Berlin, January 11th, 2024, Andreas Schmid, Lars Müller.

 

Further Reading

Irene Albers, Andreas Schmid: Literatur als koloniale Beute? Für eine philologische Provenienzforschung, in: Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geisteswissenschaft 97 (2023), 1003–1018. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41245-023-00222-9.

Fatima Massaquoi: The Leopard‘s Daughter. A Folk Tale from Liberia translated from the VAI Language, Illustrations by Martha Burnham Humphrey, Boston 1961.

Ernst Dammann: August Klingenheben (1886–1967), in: Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 117(1967)2, 211–214.

 

Kickoff for Collaborative Initiative between Dean College and IN_CONTEXT

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As part of the initiative “Exploring History and Digital Methods” by IN_CONTEXT and Dean College in Franklin, Massachusetts (USA), John Woitkowitz held two virtual guest seminars on November 13 and 15, 2023. With students of the HIS 425 Digital History seminar and Professor David B. Dennis, Dr. John Woitkowitz discussed the role of digitized collections as well as questions about the creation and the curation of metadata and the ways they affect research practices for historians but also researchers from the wider digital humanities. How historical catalogs shape modern collections, what needs to be critically considered when making sources available digitally and how international recommendations seek to establish a more responsible use of metadata was at the center of the first seminar.

Students at Dean College during XML/TEI seminar

Students at Dean College during XML/TEI seminar (Photo: David B. Dennis)

The practical workshop on November 15 focused on encoding historical sources on colonial history using the XML/TEI P5 Guidelines. The exercise brought many students into contact with the possibilities of digital historical research for the first time. Students independently selected sources, for example, on the history of British imperialism or Indigenous groups in Alaska from the Children’s Encyclopedia (1908-1913) made available through the Digitized Collections of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. Using a basic TEI vocabulary, they will now go on to markup and encode their primary source documents. In addition to creating an XML/TEI encoding, students will also draft an “Editorial Note” to contextualize the documents historically and a bibliography of current research literature for further reading on the subject of their primary document. Topics relating to ethical issues such as authorship, the assignment of historical place names or the classification of sources met with particular interest throughout the practical workshop.

Following a review by Professor Dennis and Dr. John Woitkowitz, the students’ editorial notes, bibliographies and XML/TEI documents are considered for publication in the “Citizen History Sourcebook” of the New England Journal of History and to be made available as research data for further use. A presentation of the contributions in the form of a virtual exhibition is planned. Dr. John Woitkowitz and his colleagues at Stabi Berlin are also looking forward to welcoming Professor Dennis toStabi Berlin next year, where he will give a talk about research and teaching in the digital humanities in the United States.

We would like to thank Dr. Nicole Eichenberger for her generous assistance in the conception of the XML/TEI workshop.

For more information about “Exploring History and Digital Methods”, click here.

Workshop Colonial Contexts in Libraries

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A conference report by Christine Kühn

On 6-7 November 2023, about 60 researchers and librarians from more than 16 institutions came together at the Berlin State Library to discuss colonial contexts in libraries. For the first time, a comprehensive programme combined diverse issues and approaches. Various library-specific fields of action were identified: provenance research on collections, decolonisation of libraries, handling of metadata, appropriation of intangible cultural assets, ethical and legal considerations regarding sensitive content, and finally digitisation and access to information for Communities of Interest. Speakers from Cameroon, Kenya, Liberia, Namibia, and Sri Lanka offered their perspectives via video messages on this inaugural gathering. The event was organised by the dbv-Kommission Provenienzforschung und Provenienzerschließung and the project IN_CONTEXT: Colonial Histories and Digital Collections together with the German Lost Art Foundation (DZK).

The conference started with keynotes from Hermann Parzinger (President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation), Larissa Förster (DZK), Michaela Scheibe, and Larissa Schmid (Berlin State Library) in the Berlin State Library. The first two panels centred on acquisition and object histories, not only limited to objects from unlawful contexts but also addressing whether the provenance of an object has been sufficiently explored. Discussions delved into the issue of colonial power structures and how these have been perpetuated, past legal arrangements and contracts for travel and acquisition notwithstanding. Ralf Kramer from Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Bavarian State Library) sparked a discussion on the ultimate goal of researching colonial provenances, questioning the validity of keeping objects as permanent loans from Communities of Interest or restituting digital objects in lieu of physical ones.

Hermann Parzinger in conversation with Achim Bonte, Larissa Schmid, and Michaela Scheibe (Photo: Hagen Immel)

The afternoon of the first day continued with panels on ethical and anti-racist perspectives. Julia Zenker from the university library of the Humboldt University and the FID Sozial- und Kulturanthropologie (specialised information service Social and Cultural Anthropology) raised questions about digitizing certain contents and objects, exploring the issue of what should be digitised and who is allowed to make this decision in the end. On the one hand, there might be uncertainty whether the pictures and texts depict culturally or religiously sensitive topics, on the other hand, digitisation cannot guarantee access via the Internet for Communities of Interest as this largely depends on the infrastructure available to them. Simon Cubelic from the Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies at the University Heidelberg highlighted the importance of identifying suitable contacts for possible restitutions within Communities of Interests. Sometimes, it might make sense to look for civic instead of official players. Afterwards, it was Anne Peiter who addressed the question whether the display and use of images taken from colonial contexts is possible without perpetuating the colonial gaze. The focus then shifted towards the broader library praxis. Moritz Strickert of the university library of the Humboldt University presented the vocabulary work carried out by the workgroup Thesauri of the Network Colonial Contexts, which puts a variety of different thesauri in relation to each other. Birgit Kramreither and Birgit Athumani Hango of the Vienna University Library and Maike Mewes and Jantje Bruns of the library of Museum am Rothenbaum, a one-person library, gave reports on their respective processes of decolonisation, e. g. regarding their collections and creating a context for the users with the help of a statement, a QR code referring to additional pieces of information, and anti-racist guided library tours.

The second workshop day began with a panel on colonial collection practices: How colonial knowledge structures are entrenched in cartographic and library collections of the Perthes Verlag and determine today’s access to archival materials and literature was the focus of the contribution by Petra Weigel from the Gotha Research Library at the University of Erfurt. The following lecture provided insights into the colonial connotations of Christian missionary literature and the representations of Communities of Interest in contrast to the Christian missionaries at mikado, the library and documentation centre of the International Catholic Missionary Society missio e. V. The discussion then shifted to the philological level in the lecture by Irene Albers and Andreas Schmid from the Free University of Berlin on collection practices: To what extent are stories from colonised countries anonymised and reprocessed in anthologies before they are commercially exploited in fairy tale collections for a German audience? Of course, the holdings of the Berlin State Library were also the subject of Meliné Pehlivanian’s lecture on the Ernst Dammann Collection of the Oriental Department.

In the panel on digitisation, Elke Brehm discussed whether ethnographic film material that was originally recorded for research purposes might be used outside of research purposes, considering ethical and not just legal issues. Maria Hermes-Wladarsch presented the Digital Collection of German Colonialism project. She then discussed how the selection of the collection can depend on the definition of colonialism and how, in this way, library collection practice is always an expression of the current situation.

In the panel on metadata and presentation, the question over an alleged neutrality of metadata was explored – after all, it is always produced by those who create it. Christoph Rauch from the Berlin State Library also provided insights into current developments in the Qalamos portal on provenance research, we learnt about the role played by FAIR and CARE principles and the development of personas for the DDB’s Collections from Colonial Contexts portal and considered why the “Dresden” Maya Codex is actually associated with Dresden and how accessibility for Latin American communities is affected if it is only presented on a website in German and English.

The presentations and lively discussions were interspersed with impulses and interventions through recordings by Mutanu Kyany’a from Kenya, Debey Sayndee from Liberia, Naazima Kamardeen from Sri Lanka, Albert Gouffo from Cameroon, and Werner Hillebrecht from Namibia. Mutanu Kyany’a emphasised that cooperation is necessary not only to give Communities of Interest access to their cultural assets and information about their cultures but also to initiate real transformation. Naazima Kamardeen expressed a lack of understanding of the arbitrariness of restitution decisions by custodian societies and the associated inequality between actors and criticised the concept of the “global South”, the content of which is better defined by the “global majority”. Albert Gouffo expressed the desire for joint bibliographies or collections of shared knowledge between Cameroon and Germany.

Albert Gouffo talks via video message to the participants (Photo: Christine Kühn)

One of the original motivations of the workshop, namely a joint reflection on drafting guidelines for libraries and their handling of colonial contexts, inspired by the guidelines for handling collections from colonial contexts of Deutscher Museumsbund (German museums association), which museums already use, was realised in the form of pinboards with questions for the participants. This meant that there was always room for discussion, exchange, and participation during the breaks. In the last time slot of the workshop, the answers and comments were presented and put up for discussion.

Michaela Scheibe and Regine Dehnel present the results on the pin boards (Photo: Christine Kühn)

You can view the detailed programme with lecture titles, participants, and institutions here.

For further exchange, interested individuals are invited to join future meetings of the network Colonial Contexts and the network Decolonize the Library.

Hopefully, this workshop sparks further cooperative initiatives, fosters ongoing dialogues between libraries, cultural heritage institutions, practitioners, researchers, and Communities of Interest. Planned future projects include a thematic issue in o-bib in 2024 and an international conference.

 

 

 

CfP: Workshop on Colonial Contexts in Libraries

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The colonial past is increasingly the subject of public debate. Cultural heritage institutions bear a special responsibility, and museums in particular have already begun to reflect critically on their colonial entanglements and to investigate their colonial legacies. Provenance research and restitution debates have contributed to this. So far, libraries have played a marginal role in this debate, although the term “museums and collections” used in most official documents also includes historical collections held in libraries. The dbv Commission for Provenance Research and Provenance Cataloguing and the project IN_CONTEXT of the State Library Berlin in cooperation with the German Lost Art Foundation are taking this desideratum as an opportunity to take a closer look at how libraries deal with holdings from colonial contexts.

The aim of the workshop is to bring together actors from libraries, interest groups and research in this field to present holdings that are already known to be relevant and to conduct preliminary work on guidelines on how to deal with colonial holdings in libraries. The goal is both a fundamental discussion of how to deal with colonial contexts in libraries and a focus on specific holdings and topics. The workshop will focus on two themes:

First, the question of holdings in libraries that originate from colonial contexts of injustice will be raised. To what extent, for example, did objects come to Europe in connection with the looting of Magdala (1868) or the so-called Boxer War? To what extent do libraries already conduct provenance research and, if so, are there demands for restitution? How can provenance data be integrated into metadata?

Second, the question of holdings related to colonialism is addressed: How do libraries deal with so-called reception literature, such as travelogues or colonial nostalgia literature? To what extent does the topic also affect special collections such as maps, bequests or photo collections? How should scholarly literature from the colonial era be handled? How can these holdings be appropriately integrated into digital collections and repositories?

The deadline for submissions is June 15, 2023. The workshop language is German.

Call for Papers: Colonial Contexts in Libraries.

For any inquiries, please contact in_context@sbb.spk-berlin.de

Deutsche Version

Going Digital in CAREful Age

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The digitization of historical material at information and cultural heritage institutions is taking place as histories of colonialism increasingly take center stage in the ways libraries and museums reconsider their own past. The intersection of these fields raises important questions about the historical and ethical dimensions of digitizing historical material today. As international bodies develop guidelines to operationalize principles and standards for digitization, debates within the digital humanities have taken up the issue and urge a critical reflection on the practices of digitizing historical material from colonial contexts.

The ordering of knowledge across European information and cultural heritage institutions has a long history. Modern systems and methods of organizing collections and objects long preceeded our digital moment. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, museums, scientific societies and emerging academic disciplines, for example, began to organize knowledge and objects of the non-European world in new taxonomies and classifications. In doing so, they helped craft what was unknown or labelled different as objects of scientific inquiry, often casting regions and their peoples in exoticized and racialized terms that was used to justify colonial regimes of exploitation and oppression.

The digital re-ordering of our time may not resemble its nineteenth-century equivalent in all respects. There are, however, historical echoes that call for critical reflection. The digitization of historical collections creates new forms of data and with that new ways of describing data. In this context, the Research Data Alliance and the Global Indigenous Data Alliance released the FAIR (2016) and CARE (2019) principles to ensure accessible and ethically responsible data stewardship. (While FAIR data must be findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable, CARE data includes collective benefit, authority to control, responsibility, and ethics as criteria.) As our project IN_CONTEXT: Colonial Histories and Digital Collections sets out to digitize historical material and to develop a framework for a virtual research environment, the project continuously confronts fundamental questions when recreating physical sources in the digital realm: How do we deal with historical classification schemes and the adoption of contemporary designations? How do we negotiate the tensions between requirements from funding agencies, institutional standards, and international guidelines developed to ensure FAIR and CAREful data stewardship? How do we make accessible exoticizing and racist source material? Are editorial layers across website interfaces sufficient? How can such practices be extended to the design of APIs, computational access points to retrieve data? And who ought to be at the table when making these decisions?

These questions were the subject of a panel discussion on “Digitizing Cultural Heritage and Postcolonial Perspectives” at the 9th annual meeting of the Association for the Digital Humanities in German-speaking Countries (DHd) at the University of Trier. IN_CONTEXT’s John Woitkowitz and Human.Machine.Culture project co-lead Clemens Neudecker joined colleagues to reflect on the ethical dimensions of digitization projects. In a wide-ranging discussion, the panel pointed to the opportunities of digitizing collections and applying computational methods to digitized material. Global access to historical material that relates to colonial histories is valuable for research communities but specifically so for those communities where material was removed and who continue to deal with the legacies of colonial violence and exploitation. Likewise, identifying bias and sensitive content with the help of artificial intelligence-assisted tools opens up new opportunities for data stewardship and research methodologies.

At the same time, significant challenges exist to comply meaningfully with the CARE principles when dealing with colonial histories. Co-curation of data and the co-development of information infrastructure, such as web-based repositories and research environments, are important to mitigate bias and to vest interpretive authority within source communities. Such work, however, cannot be short-term. Building trust-based relationships that sustain projects requires long-term commitments, a key aspect that often is complicated by precarious employment, funding timelines, and uncertainty over the sustainability of project work. Likewise, grant stipulations that require open access to digitized material may not always be compatible with accepted usage as prescribed by source communities. Diverse degrees of digital infrastructure further complicate the notion of place-agnostic access to digitized material, an aspect that calls for rethinking platform development and digitization processes.

Accessibility and collective benefit, two important FAIR and CARE principles, also touch on aspects of language. The DHd working group Multilingual has taken an active role in raising awareness and providing a platform to further advance critical perspectives in this field. For users from a diverse range of linguistic communities to be able to understand and benefit from material and resources digitization projects make available, multilinguality needs to expand as a standard in information institutions. It also needs to be included in design processes across data modelling, user interface development, and API design if digitized material is to cut across existing linguistic boundaries.

In many ways, going digital in a global information environment is reconnecting knowledge and collections with their histories and legacies. This digital moment, however, is not without its contradictions. Digitizing material that relate to colonial histories cannot be done without the collaboration of those affected by these very histories. Instead, it must include meaningful collaboration and the resources to sustain such work. As debates evolve and new standards emerge, there will be imperfect solutions along the way. But as we reshape the knowledge orders in our time, there is ample room to push for a more equitable model of information stewardship.

deutsche Version

Banner IN_CONTEXT: Colonial Histories and Digital Collections

Project kick-off: IN_CONTEXT: Colonial Histories and Digital Collections

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N_CONTEXT is a two-year project with the aim of securing funding to digitise library collections related to colonial histories and to develop a virtual research environment. In the medium term, the virtual research environment is to serve as a central platform to study historical sources by documenting and by making available all relevant collections in Germany and from international partners. The project is based at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (State Library Berlin) and receives funding from the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation).

Debates about coming to terms with colonial pasts have been gaining urgency, ranging from discussions about the restitution of objects in museums to renaming institutions or streets. Cultural heritage institutions increasingly reassess their roles within the history of colonialism. In doing so, their involvement in the global colonial project raises important questions about the shaping and disseminating of knowledges in collections across libraries, archives or museums. Since the seventeenth century, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin held a central role in acquiring printed books, manuscripts, personal papers, maps and photographs in Germany. Within this historical context, the project identifies those collections that relate to colonial histories within the library.

With the use of “colonial contexts”, the project adopts a comprehensive definition of colonialism. Colonial contexts include those collections that relate to formal and informal forms of colonial rule. They also include collections that reflect colonial or imperial ideologies and practices such as racist notions of cultural superiority over ethnic minority groups and the ways these were used to justify forms of exploitation and oppression.

IN_CONTEXT situates itself in debates about colonial entanglements and aims to contribute to this ongoing process of institutional reflection. As part of these efforts, the project advances reviews of library practices, provides digital access to historical material and devises a virtual research environment in close collaboration with institutions, international partners, and Communities of Interest.

Project goals:

Identifying sources for the digitisation that relate to colonial histories in the collections of Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin
IN_CONTEXT is assessing a source base for digitisation in the collections at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin and the potential for future projects across the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz  and other national and international partners.

Devising a framework for the development of a virtual research environment
IN_CONTEXT is designing a virtual research environment to serve as a hub to sources and collections connected to histories of colonialism. As part of this web-based platform, users will be able to work collaboratively and to examine sources and collections with the help of digital tools. The exchange with experts and knowledge holders connected to colonial material is critical to ensure appropriate data structures and meta-data standards. In doing so, the project seeks to engage debates about ethical implications of data modelling, design development, and accessibility.

Collaboration with representatives of institutions, international partners and Communities of Interest in the collections
IN_CONTEXT is building relationships with networks from heritage institutions and research and societal sectors through workshops, visits and other collaborations. These connections are essential to openly share knowledge about the library’s collections and to obtain advice on dealing with sensitive materials and information. In this way, the project team aims to critically reflect on the ethical dimensions of digitising collections related to colonial histories. The project further aims to act as a catalyst for wider studies and engagement with the library’s collections and colonial pasts.

Get in touch!

As we are getting underway, we look forward to hearing about suggestions and to having conversations on colonial histories, digitisation, colonialism and the development of digital infrastructure.

Project lead: Larissa Schmid
Research associates: Lars Müller and John Woitkowitz

You can reach us at in_context@sbb.spk-berlin.de.

deutsche Version