Digital Historical Archive Cologne

DHAK homepage

The Digital Historical Archive Cologne ( DHAK ) is the digital archive of the Historical Archive of the City of Cologne, freely available online . It was founded a few days after the collapse of the Cologne City Archives on March 3, 2009 and is a collaborative project of the Historical Archives of the City of Cologne, the Department of Rhenish Regional History of the Institute for History of the University of Bonn and prometheus - the distributed image archive for research and teaching eV The website provides digital copies of archival material, the originals of which have been partially destroyed or lost, and a forum is operated as a networking platform for communication about archives and the history of Cologne.

Origin and development

When the Historical Archives of the City of Cologne collapsed on March 3, 2009, parts of the holdings were completely destroyed; Only a few days after the collapse, employees from prometheus implemented the idea of counteracting this serious loss through an internet portal. Material from the Cologne City Archives that was copied or digitized before the collapse could already be uploaded quickly and easily by former users at this early stage in order to make it usable and viewable for others as well as to create a replacement for total losses. This purpose is also fulfilled by low-quality digital copies or even the indication that a copy or copy of an archival material is available to a user. From the beginning, the Cologne Digital Historical Archive was supported by a large number of people and organizations. The Bonn Department for Rhenish Regional History joined the project as a further partner in March 2009. The project was raised to an official level in April through a cooperation agreement with the Historical Archives of the City of Cologne. In 2009 the DHAK was nominated for the Grimme Online Award and thus honored for its previous work. In June 2011 the changeover to a new design took place. The project has been funded by the DFG since November 2012 and will be expanded significantly in the future, as well as adding new functionalities. After the inclusion of duplicates of the Cologne civil and civil status registers from the holdings of the North Rhine-Westphalia State Archives in January 2013, the DHAK has almost 2 million entries.

Functions

The functions of the DHAK are currently divided into four sections. The original purpose is realized in the digital "reading room", in which the users can call up digital copies which are arranged according to the archival tectonics . In addition to the entries created by users, the digitized finding aids and digitized microfilms that have been stored in the Barbarastollen by the Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Relief are being gradually discontinued. The holdings up to around 1815 will therefore be available almost entirely digitally in the foreseeable future. The DHAK is an important tool for genealogists thanks to the availability of the civil and civil status registers in Cologne . For the reprocessing of archive goods damaged in the collapse of the archive, there is the area of "sponsorships", in which particularly valuable or interesting archive materials are presented that have already been restored or are still waiting for willing donors who make such a restoration possible and identify themselves with their names immortalize on the envelope of the respective archivale. In the first few years, users of the portal were able to exchange information on topics and research projects on the history of Cologne in the "Network" section, for example to obtain information on holdings and archival materials that were of particular importance for their own work, but neither in the original nor at that time were usable as digital copies. Since the spring of 2014, this task has been taken over by an independent forum, which is intended to expand and categorize the previous networking options. Furthermore, under the title “My Archive”, specific points of the archival tectonics, complete signatures or individual image views can be saved in order to be able to access them again and provide them with private notes.

literature

Janusch Carl, Andreas Rutz: Bits and Bytes instead of parchment and paper? The digital historical archive of Cologne and the future of the Cologne city archive in Web 2.0 . In: Archivist. Zeitschrift für Archivwesen , No. 65, 2012, pp. 143–153 ( online ; PDF; 4.1 MB).
Manuel Hagemann, Andreas Rutz: "The digital historical archive of Cologne. Digital presentation of the archival material and virtual reconstruction of the holdings of the historical archive of the city of Cologne". A new DFG project from the Department of Rhenish Regional History . In: Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter , No. 77, 2013, pp. 309–314. ( online ; PDF)
Manuel Hagemann: Opportunities for collaborative archival indexing in the digital environment. Concepts for the expansion of the Digital Historical Archive Cologne . In: Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter, No. 78, 2014, pp. 192–221. ( online ; PDF)
Manuel Hagemann: The user as a partner. Collaborative indexing of archives in the Digital Historical Archive Cologne . In: Cooperation without competition. Perspectives of archival cooperation models. 48th Rhenish Archives Day 26. – 27. June 2014 in Kleve. Articles (= archive books 45), ed. v. LVR Archive Advice and Training Center, Bonn 2015, pp. 189–194.

perspective

In future, the possibilities for the participation of archive users on the Web 2.0 level on the DHAK side are to be expanded considerably. This includes optimizing the functions of the digital "reading room". Part of the project funded by the DFG is therefore to create a new viewer with which the documents in the archive can not only be viewed, but also edited. With the new viewer, for example, it is already possible to change the contrast or saturation settings of the digitized material, to invert the image or to show auxiliary lines. Using a differentiated annotation tool, users should also be able to create transcriptions, for example, or mark and enter dates and names in order to provide clues for the chronological and thematic classification of the document. In this way, researchers and laypeople should be able to contribute the specialist knowledge they have acquired while studying Cologne's city history. In addition, visitors to the site should be able to help redefine and classify the numerous archive materials that were often completely torn out of their systematic context when the city archive collapsed. In this way, the number of pieces that are not or not clearly identified should be minimized considerably. The DHAK takes on a pioneering role in archiving .

Web links

Individual evidence

↑ On the collapse of the archive and its consequences cf. esp. Bettina Schmidt-Czaia, Ulrich Fischer, Max Plassmann: On the collapse of the historical archive of the city of Cologne. In: Archivist . Zeitschrift für Archivwesen 62 (2009), pp. 148–152 ( online ; PDF; 3.3 MB); Johannes Kistenich: Phases of salvage and initial supply of the archive material from the historical archive of the city of Cologne. In: Ibid., Pp. 305-313 ( online ; PDF; 2.9 MB); Wilfried Reininghaus , Andreas Pilger (Ed.): Lessons from Cologne. Documentation of the expert hearing "The Cologne Archive Collapse and the Consequences". Düsseldorf 2009 (= publications of the North Rhine-Westphalia State Archive 25); Andreas Berger: Digitization - The future of the archive? In: Bettina Schmidt-Czaia , Ulrich S. Soénius (Ed.): Gedächtnisort. The historical archive of the city of Cologne. Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2010, pp. 84–95.
↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from May 15, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (January 8, 2013). @1@ 2
↑ Brief presentation of the project on the DFG website: http://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/OCTOPUS/?module=gepris&task=showDetail&context=projekt&id=218062591 (January 8, 2013).

[1] On the collapse of the archive and its consequences cf. esp. Bettina Schmidt-Czaia, Ulrich Fischer, Max Plassmann: On the collapse of the historical archive of the city of Cologne. In: Archivist . Zeitschrift für Archivwesen 62 (2009), pp. 148–152 ( online ; PDF; 3.3 MB); Johannes Kistenich: Phases of salvage and initial supply of the archive material from the historical archive of the city of Cologne. In: Ibid., Pp. 305-313 ( online ; PDF; 2.9 MB); Wilfried Reininghaus , Andreas Pilger (Ed.): Lessons from Cologne. Documentation of the expert hearing "The Cologne Archive Collapse and the Consequences". Düsseldorf 2009 (= publications of the North Rhine-Westphalia State Archive 25); Andreas Berger: Digitization - The future of the archive? In: Bettina Schmidt-Czaia , Ulrich S. Soénius (Ed.): Gedächtnisort. The historical archive of the city of Cologne. Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2010, pp. 84–95.

[2] Archive link ( Memento of the original from May 15, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (January 8, 2013). @1@ 2

[3] Brief presentation of the project on the DFG website: http://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/OCTOPUS/?module=gepris&task=showDetail&context=projekt&id=218062591 (January 8, 2013).