The three-year project set out to digitise 5,000 of the printed German works listed in VD 17. The titles selected were key works that had a wide readership during the 17th century. They were thus assumed to be representative of the mainstream and hence especially relevant for research. To be classified as ‘mainstream’, at least one copy of the works in question had to be held by at least three of the libraries participating in VD 17.

In accordance with the master plan of which the mainstream literature digitisation project was one part, each of the four libraries converted 5,000 works into digital form. Besides the HAB Wolfenbüttel, the other project participants were the state and university libraries in Dresden (SLUB), Göttingen (SUB) and Halle (ULB).

Following the standards of mass digitisation projects already realised, the Herzog August Bibliothek digitised 750,000 pages, furnished the digital versions with structural metadata to enable navigation and indexed and catalogued them in both VD 17 and the Gemeinsamer Bibliotheksverbund (Common Library Network, GBV).

PURL: http://diglib.hab.de/?link=038

Funding: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation, DFG)
Duration: March 2012 – February 2016