Digitalisation and indexing of the alba amicorum collection of the Lower Saxony’s State Archives – Wolfenbüttel department

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The State Archives of Lower Saxony (NLA) – Wolfenbüttel department holds 303 family albums (also: alba amicorum, Philotheken), the largest collection of early modern friendship albums in Lower Saxony and one of the largest collections of family albums in Germany and Europe (duration: 1572-1888). The family history books are a collective form of entries which, as a highly complex arrangement of texts and pictures referring to each other, elude a simple definition. The keeper of a family album collected written and pictorial entries from fellow students, professors, dignitaries, rulers and members of other social groups during a certain phase of his life, mostly while travelling. On the one hand this practice served the purpose of a personal memoria, on the other hand an album amicorum functioned as an artistically designed visualization form of the own relationship network with the character of a letter of recommendation for third parties. Philotheques are examined by numerous scientific disciplines and can make an essential contribution to answering a broad horizon of research questions. The extensive collection of the NLA - Wolfenbüttel department offers an almost prototypical but high-quality cross-section of this source genre. Making the collection of ancestral books accessible is a suitable way of decisively expanding the existing body of sources, especially in northern Germany. For this purpose the complete digitalization of the collection in colour as well as a deep indexing of the family registers is carried out in the form of a single sheet indexing of all entries. The extensive indexing data refer in detail to the digitized records and enable fast, targeted access to them. The specially designed indexing grid takes into account the essential interests of research as well as the networking with authority files. Since this is the first enterprise of its kind in the field of archives, the project will be concluded by a larger conference with the participation of research and representatives of various branches of the scientific infrastructure.