Monastery

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Monasterium (abbreviation mom ) is the world's largest virtual archive for historical European documents . A consortium of more than 160 institutions from over 30 countries makes scans of over 650,000 (as of November 4, 2019) European (medieval and modern) documents available to researchers and the public at the web address www.monasterium.net .

Origin and development

The project started in the diocesan archive of St. Pölten in Lower Austria . Lower Austria is very rich in monasteries , although it is special that these have existed without interruption since their foundation in the high Middle Ages and can therefore also have an unbroken archival tradition on site. In addition to their own history, these monasteries preserve a large part of the medieval and early modern tradition of the history of this country.

The historical quality of the documents and the technical offer led to great interest and high demand and suggested not only adding documents from other dioceses to the database, but also expanding the project beyond the borders of Austria.

The importance of the documents not only for church history, but also for the history of the country led to the fact that the limitation to spiritual documents was abandoned. Despite its name, Monasterium became a virtual archive for all kinds of medieval and early modern documents.

In addition to the participating archives, the project received institutional support from the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Art and Culture. In 2006 a memorandum was published as the basis for the cooperation and expansion. In 2007 the plan was made to organize European cooperation through an International Center for Archival Research ( ICARUS ) association.

With 636,658 (as of March 11, 2018) medieval and early modern documents from 170 (as of March 11, 2018) different contributing institutions, the association has succeeded in opening up this genre more comprehensively than any other historical source type.

Current situation

Monasterium is financed to a large extent by participating in numerous international projects, using the relevant funding from the European Union with its programs Culture 2000 , Intereg III and Creative Europe . Some areas are also supported by the German Research Foundation and the Fund for the Promotion of Scientific Research , and finally the archives involved also make their own contribution to the provision of their document holdings.

Selected carriers in the ICARUS network

Austria

Germany

Switzerland

Czech Republic

literature

  • Karl Heinz: Monasterium.net - On the way to a European document portal, In: Regional document books. The lectures of the 12th session of the Commission Internationale de Diplomatique; NÖLA. Messages from the Lower Austrian Provincial Archives 14 (2010), Ed .: Theo Kölzer, Willibald Rosner, Roman Zehetmayer, St. Pölten 2010, pp. 139–145.
  • Adelheid Krah: Monasterium.net - Europe's virtual document archive. Options for the provision and indexing of document holdings, In: Archivalische Zeitschrift (91/2009), special edition, publisher: General Directorate of the Bavarian State Archives, Cologne-Weimar-Vienna 2009, pp. 221–246.
  • Benjamin Burkard: EditMOM - a specialized tool for collaborative document indexing, In: Digitale Diplomatik, Ed .: Georg Vogeler , Cologne u. a. 2009 (AfD supplement 12), pp. 255–270.
  • Annkristin Schlichte: Documents on the Internet: the international document portal monasterium.net . In: Arbido. Specialized portals for cultural assets. Issue 1 (February 23, 2012)
  • Karl-Ernst Lupprian: The MOnasteriuM.net (MOM) project . In: EDV-Tage Theuern 2006

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://icar-us.eu/cooperation/online-portals/monasterium-net/general-information
  2. ↑ ICARUS annual reports The figures for the development of the stock can be found in the annual reports under the headings Members and Monasterium .