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New Resource Available

January 22, 2004 Author: CDLCategories:

a. Digitale Bibliothek Deutscher Klassiker (Digital Library of German Classics)

By Jim Spohrer, UC Berkeley

The Digitale Bibliothek Deutscher Klassiker (Digital Library of German Classics) contains all of the works in the Deutscher Klassiker Verlag printed editions except works by Schiller, Goethe, and Wieland.  The web edition is currently being issued in eight complete full-text releases.  Published in cooperation with the Deutscher Klassiker Verlag Frankfurt am Main, the database provides electronic access to 133 volumes of the print edition, SGML-coded and manually keyed.

The database is highly regarded in Germany and throughout the world as the premier collection of literary and non-literary German writing.  All of the texts in the Digitale Bibliothek Deutscher Klassiker have been newly edited by leading international scholars and are accompanied by extensive commentaries that reflect the most recent research.  The database holds 31 single-author editions (Werkausgaben), including writers such as Wolfram von Eschenbach, Kleist, and Kant, and all 16 collections (Sammelwerke) of historical, philosophical, theological, political, and art history texts.

The Digitale Bibliothek Deutscher Klassiker gives users the ability to cross-search an outstanding corpus of classic texts and opens up significant new possibilities for research in German literature, language, and thought.

Endorsed by the Joint Steering Committee on Shared Collections (JSC), and approved by the Collection Development Committee (CDC), the database is an important contribution to our digital collection of international scholarly resources.

As part of its collaborative mission, the CDL partially funded this one-time purchase, supported by co-investment over five years with zero percent financing from six participating campuses (UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC San Diego, UC Irvine, UCLA, and UC Merced) to allow access throughout the UC system.  The license contains perpetual access to guarantee ongoing UC research for future generations.

The database is available at http://klassiker.chadwyck.com.

Note: The CDL would like to thank Jim Spohrer for leading the negotiations for this license.