UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE

Researching historical sources

Academics and young researchers can use our historical collections for their work. We make our holdings accessible and make them available digitally. This enables you to work comfortably with historical sources. In addition, we offer a high level of personal support.

Current UCL projects:

• Access to the Hittorff collection: The UCL owns master drawings and the library of the architect and antiquarian Jakob Ignaz Hittorff (1792-1867). Since 1995 the holdings have been scientifically indexed and published in the Hittorff inventories. Jakob Ignaz Hittorff Collection >>

• Monastery libraries in the Cologne area: Our collection contains numerous books from secularised monastery libraries that were brought together in the grammar school library. This collection thus offers an insight into the monastic book culture of various orders from the 15th to 18th centuries. The aim of the Klosterbibliotheken im Kölner Raum project is to make these holdings accessible in order to facilitate in-depth research into the history of knowledge and libraries as well as networks in the early modern Rhineland. Go to the project page (German) >>

• Fragment research: We have a considerable collection of medieval handwritten fragments, which are now being catalogued: Go to the project page (German) >>

• Detailed cataloguing of the University and City Library's incunabula: The University and City Library houses around 2350 incunabula, which were formally catalogued in the 19th century. The project for the detailed cataloguing of the University and City Library's incunabula adds an exemplar-specific level to the previous state. In addition, a metadata schema is being developed that combines all relevant categories of incunabula cataloguing. Go to the project page (German) >>

Completed UCL projects:

• Cologne Jesuit Collection: The Jesuitenprojekt records the provenance of books and information about their former location, among other things, in the Cologne Jesuit Collection >>

Other campus projects:

• Frontispiece and Title Page – The Semantics and Design of Early Modern Art. A project of the Institute of Art History at the University of Cologne, Department of General Art History. Read more (German) >>
• Wallraf digital - discover a piece of Cologne's city history via various digital access points. Read more (German) >>
• Gentz digital - the digital cataloguing of the correspondence of Friedrich von Gentz (1764 - 1832). Read more >>