The e-rara and e-manuscripta platforms

The e-rara platform

Holdings

The spectrum of digitised resources extends from books and maps to illustrated materials. You can search the platform for the following collections:

• Swiss prints (15th–20th centuries)
• Topics and collections (from alchemy to historical scientific literature)
• Private libraries

You can access PDFs free of charge and zoom in on the high-quality digitised documents.

How the platform came about

The e-rara platform was created as part of the e-lib.ch (Electronic Library Switzerland) project and went live in 2010. Its aim is to make holdings in digital form accessible to a wide audience. The platform is operated jointly by the Bibliothèque de Genève, ETH Library, Basel University Library, Bern University Library and the Zentralbibliothek Zürich. Other libraries also make their holdings available on e-rara, and the range is continually being expanded.

e-rara with thumbnail view and other updates

In 2020, e-rara was completely redesigned and many technical improvements were made. For example, the zoom function now allows additional magnification levels. The updated navigation bar in the page view also contains a button to jump directly to the end of the print and, in the thumbnail view, several pages can be conveniently and clearly displayed. What’s more, full texts can now be downloaded as Alto XML files. There is also a new option to display up to 100 search hits per page.

Take a look for yourself and find out how you can use e-rara for your research.

The e-manuscripta platform

Holdings

e-manuscripta offers digitised versions of a wide variety of documents:

• Text manuscripts (individual and collective)
• Correspondence from individuals and institutions
• Sheet music
• Manuscript maps
• Drawings
• Photos

The platform’s offering and functionalities are being continually expanded. You can use the high-quality digitised documents free of charge online or download them as PDFs. You can also make your own transcriptions of any texts you choose.

How the platform came about

The e-manuscripta platform was set up as a cooperation between three university libraries – the Zentralbibliothek Zürich, Basel University Library, and the ETH Library – using their own resources, and launched in 2013. It is still jointly operated by these three institutions and the Swiss National Library.

Linking digital versions together via IIIF

e-manuscripta has even more to offer: a special software allows you to import texts, letters, pictures, maps, music scores or miscellaneous items into a viewer, make comparisons with other works and edit the objects. To make this possible, e-manuscripta.ch has implemented the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF). Every title on e-manuscripta comes with the associated IIIF manifest.

Activities for the 10th anniversary of e-manuscripta

On 13 March 2023, e-manuscripta.ch will celebrate its 10th anniversary. A number of activities will take place to mark the occasion. On 13 and 14 March, in the Zentralbibliothek Zürich, representatives of various libraries and archives from Switzerland and abroad will exchange views on future development possibilities for the ‘Visual Library’ software on which e-manuscripta is based. Further information can be found here.

On 13 March, Professor Malte Rehbein (Chair, Digital Humanities at the University of Passau) will give a keynote speech entitled ‘Auf dem Weg zu Big Data? Handschriftenerschliessung zwischen Fachwissen, Citizen Science und K.I.’ (On the way to big data? Manuscript indexing between expertise, citizen science and A.I.) to commemorate the anniversary. Information on the event.