The Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar was founded as a princely library, has developed into a modern research library and is now – twenty years after the fire in September 2004 – repositioning itself as an archive of the future. Library director Reinhard Laube told MDR KULTUR: “It's about positioning ourselves in the present in such a way that this library has a future perspective, that it can respond to current questions and that it takes into account that it will also have to provide answers to future questions.”
Innovative search portal
The core of this reorientation is a digital search portal based on a search engine index. It allows users to search through almost five million titles. These include printed and electronic books, maps and Atlantis, music, manuscripts and many special collections.
With the new search portal, the library will also be able to provide information on pressing questions of the present. Reinhard Laube puts it succinctly: “Are our collections sufficiently developed to provide an answer to the new topic of Ukraine?” Anyone who has researched this in the catalogue will find historical maps, but also current non-fiction books and novels.
Are our collections sufficiently developed to provide an answer to the new topic of Ukraine?
Contemporary witness project collects reports on the fire
The “Future Memory – Witnesses Report” project also brings together video interviews with witnesses who, among other things, report on the night of the fire. Among them is firefighter Ralf Seeber, who was one of the first to arrive on the scene. “It took almost two hours from the alarm being raised to the roof burning down,” recalls Seeber. “When a building like this burns, it burns. We could have poured or sprayed ten thousand more litres of water on it, and that wouldn't have changed the result.”
The library has recorded almost 40 interviews in the past few months. More will be added in the coming weeks. The contemporary witnesses also talk about their connection to the Duchess Anna Amalia Library and their wishes for the future of the building. These voices are the basis for future memories, says the Klassik Stiftung Weimar, for a library as an archive of the future.
Passing on expertise in book restoration
The Duchess Anna Amalia Library will also share its experience in the field of book restoration with others. Since 2008, it has operated a restoration and training workshop together with the Klassik Stiftung Weimar. Research and tinkering are carried out there, but work is also still being done on the so-called ash books – those heavily charred book blocks that helpers removed from the rubble after the fire.
The library is currently looking for ways to make the acquired know-how available to other public institutions. For example, pilot projects are testing the transfer of restoration processes to severely damaged archive material.
