Digitising
The items of the Beethoven-Haus collections and library are being digitalised continuously and made available for free in the Digital Archive and the library catalogues.
Digital holdings (2021): c. 8,500 digitized documents, includig about 3,000 printed music scores, 100 books, 3,800 pictures and objects, 1,600 music and text manuscript.
The wish to transfer the analogue documents to a digital medium with utmost colour fidelity is due to the demand of capturing the original document's content, impression and aura. Only an accurate reproduction of even the outer appearance up to showing the paper's structure guarantees that the digital copy has the same attraction and informational depth as the original document. The scans should also be usable for the production of facsimiles and withstand further ways of usage and printing techniques.
Four image sizes are available in the Digital Archive of the Beethoven-Haus. Adapted to a medium default screen resolution their current dimensions are as follows:
a) Gallery format (640 pixels)
b) Medium format (1280 pixels)
c) Full-page format (1920 pixels)
d) High-resolution format (unscaled, only for internal use)
Our scans can also be accessed via PDF downloads (1920 pixels), DFG Viewer or Mirador Viewer.
The bibliographical, systematic and structured metadata are included in the library catalogues, specific Excel directories and databases.
Digitalisation projects
In 2001, 26,000 pages of music manuscripts, letters, first editions, pictures and objects were digitalised with the help of service providers SRZ from Berlin, eps from Bonn and the photographers Weidner/Danetzki from Rheinbreitbach. High-quality image scans (48 bit, RGB, ICC profile) on a scanner by the Cruse company from Rheinbach were used to create digital master TIF data. These data constitute the 4.3 TB large basis for specific applications. The project was promoted by the German Research Foundation DFG. As part of the project "The Digital Beethoven-Haus" it furthermore received funding from the Berlin/Bonn Act.
In 2010, more music prints, manuscripts, pictures and music instruments were digitalised as images. The service providers Mikrounivers from Berlin, Weidner/Danetzki from Rheinbreitbach and Merlin from Essen (as consultants) created more than 11,600 TIF master images. To save costs, the quality was reduced to a resolution of 300 dpi (600 dpi for manuscripts) and 24-bit colour depth (48 bit for one Beethoven autograph). The final master data had a size of about 1 TB. The project was promoted by the German Research Foundation DFG.
In the summer of 2016 Israeli photographer Ardon Barhama digitised around 2,500 pages of new acquisitions (360 GB; mostly music prints and pictures, but also manuscripts, photographs, medals and sculptures). The project was supported by George S. Blumenthal, New York.
The fourth and by far largest digitising project started in 2018. It included 84,800 pages (4,5 TB) from the library inventory of early prints (until 1850) and adaptations of Beethoven's compositions. Many first editions so far available as partial scans only were now digitised completely. Bonn photographer Jürgen Seidel was in charge of the digitalisation process. To support the project financially, the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia used funds from the "Substanzerhalt" programme, a government scheme intended for preserving archived inventory.
Once again under the direction of Jürgen Seidel, the fifth digitising project followed in 2019. It included 12,600 scans (720 GB) of books and sheet music from "Beethoven's library". The project was funded by North Rhine-Westphalia as part of relaunching the Digital Archive.
Long-term archiving
All TIF master data were saved on hard disks. The conditions for a loss-free long-term archiving affect the type and storage of media, the application of standards, the development of concepts and use of resources in order to renew the storage media on time, migrate data to new storage technologies and convert them into to new data formats. So far, several long-term archiving efforts have been undertaken:
To carry out a "refreshing" process, the Beethoven-Haus at first collaborated with the data centre of the Bonn University. The master data were copied on tape and have been at the Bonn data centre for long-time monitoring since 2006. After some staff changes, the data centre terminated its service and no review reports have been created since 2012.
That same year, a pilot project for long-term archiving was started in co-operation with the University of Cologne and the Digital Archive of North Rhine-Westphalia (DA-NRW). During the development of the DA-NRW master data from the first two digitising projects were used as test data. When the DA-NRW was institutionalised in 2017, long-term archiving could neither be continued nor extended at the DA-NRW due to high storage costs.
In 2003 had the German Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK) offered a pilot project for laser exposition of files on colour microfilm to store them in the underground archive of Germany (Barbarastollen underground archive) and as such replace the incomplete copies on monochromatic film that are already archived there. Between 2017 and 2020 the data from the first two digitalisation projects were prepared and exposed at the State Archives of Baden-Württemberg in Ludwigsburg.
Since 2017, the entire homepage with the digital archive www.beethoven.de has been archived long-term at the Bavarian State Library (Musiconn, web archiving of internet resources).
In 2019 the Digital Archive joined the NFDI4Culture initiative with a letter of commitment. From the vantage point of the Beethoven-Haus, the initiative's primary aim is to ensure affordable long-term archiving.
Digitalisation of audio files
The audio files of the Digital Archive include both new proprietary productions as well as productions for that a license was purchased.
All 335 audio letters were recorded by Timo Berndt, an actor from Bonn. They were recorded in 2002 and 2003 at the Bonn studio of the daruf media company from Borchen under the direction of Michael Mentzel.
The Digital Archive's 39 autographs with sound were produced as flash files by Simone Lahme in 2004. Between 2018 and 2019 they were converted to HTML 5 by Cologic, a company from Cologne, under the supervision of Florian Hetmann.
The 1,600 audio samples and recordings of Beethoven compositions were taken from the two complete recordings of the Deutsche Grammophon:
Complete Beethoven Edition, Hamburg, 1997
The New Complete Beethoven Edition, Berlin, 2019