Uppsala University Library: Support the digitization of cultural treasures
Digitization can make the Library's treasures available to everyone. For 400 years, Uppsala University Library has played a key role in the dissemination of knowledge both within and beyond the University. The collections range from thousand-year-old manuscripts, early printed material and pictures to scholarly publications.
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The University’s research and the University Library’s collections are available both digitally and physically through active publishing operations and scholarly communication. The University Library is at the forefront of digital developments and aspires to be a nationally leading digital library environment.
An Icelandic law book from the end of the 17th century, which belongs to the more fragile material at the Carolina Rediviva University Library.
The Library's digitization project
The library looks after and develops its unique collections to make them accessible for education, research and the world around. In addition to extensive resources for digital media, the University Library has six million printed books that can be found via the library’s search engines. Carolina Rediviva library also contains large cultural heritage collections in the form of early printed material, manuscripts, pictures, maps and music scores. The library has a vital responsibility to preserve these treasures and make them available for research, society and future generations.
The library’s open platform for digital collections and digitised cultural heritage – Alvin – now contains nearly 200,000 items. However, the process of digitisation has only just begun. So far, only a fraction of the collections are available online. The need for digitisation is increasing, partly so as to offer new opportunities for study and research, and partly to protect the fragile material.
The goal is to continue to develop the digital platforms for both scholarly publications and cultural heritage collections. However, the library does not just want to continue to make its material freely accessible online. The aim is to further increase opportunities to use digitised material by developing digital and physical exhibitions that can make the cultural heritage collections more widely available.
Ahead of the University Library’s 400th anniversary in 2021, a new exhibition hall was prepared and a number of targeted digitisation projects were launched.
Support is needed to make it possible to intensify work on preserving the library’s treasures and making them available so that more people can benefit from them.
”Digitisation means that cultural heritage can belong to everyone. We need to move forward vigorously. Our goal is to continue to develop our digital platforms for both scholarly publications and cultural heritage collections.”
Lars Burman, Library Director, Professor of Literature
A Linnaeus manuscript donated to the University Library
Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Coco Norén, Uppsala University; AFUU President Professor Anders Malmberg and Library Director Professor Lars Burman in the University Library Book hall during the hand-over ceremony.
A manuscript from 1745 bearing the signature of Carl Linnaeus has been donated to Uppsala University Library by Professor Robert A. Stein through the American Friends of Uppsala University, or AFUU.
The manuscript, dated May 17, 1745, is part of a document concerning a real estate purchase, and was previously within a larger set of documents addressed to the Swedish high court, “Kongl. Maj: ts och Riksens höglofl. Swea Hofrätt.” It is signed by the then-fifteen members of the university's board, one of them being Carl Linnaeus, who is famous for the hierarchical classification, or taxonomy, of nature in his Systema Natura.
The donation was made by Professor Robert A Stein, Everett Fraser Professor of Law, Distinguished Global Professor, University of Minnesota Law School, also a member of AFUU’s board of directors, who recently bought the document in the United States in order to donate it to Uppsala University Library via AFUU.
– We are very grateful to have Professor Stein as a friend of Uppsala University and for his continuous support to the university, of which the donation of the Linnaeus document is the latest example, says Professor Anders Malmberg, President of AFUU.
The document was handed over to Uppsala University and Uppsala University Library on March 17, 2021.
– Generous donors have enriched our library throughout its long history. We are very grateful for this gift, says Library Director Lars Burman.