E-rara.ch

E-rara.ch is a national community project to provide the public and free digitized rare books from Swiss libraries. This is part of the Swiss innovation and co-operation program e -lib.ch: Electronic library Switzerland, which is also responsible for e - manuscripta.ch and e-codices. Five Swiss libraries have been actively involved in the construction of the platform and digitize their books locally. It is the Bibliothèque de Genève, the ETH-Bibliothek Zurich, Basel University Library, the University Library of Berne and Zurich Central Library. Other libraries to make their collections for digitization available. Basically, all Swiss libraries can participate in e-rara.ch.

Cooperation partners are also the Bibliothèque et universitaire de Lausanne Cantonal, the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research, the Rectors' Conference of Switzerland, RERO, Réseau de bibliothèques de Suisse occidentale and the Swiss Society for the History of colleges. Other participating partners include the Bibliotheca Universitaria Lugano, the Bibliothèque des Pasteur de Neuchâtel, the Bibliothèque publique et universitaire de Neuchâtel, the BCU Lausanne, the Biblioteca Salita dei Frati, Lugano, the Service de bibliothèques Université de Neuchâtel and the Swiss Institute for Child and youth media ( SIKJM ).

The technical basis for the platform makes the product Visual Library of companies semantics GmbH and Walter Nagel GmbH & Co. KG. The hosting of the Internet presentation lies with the ETH-Bibliothek.

Project objectives

Goal is to offer online and for free use available in Swiss libraries Swiss prints of the 15th and 16th century. It is worked directly with the VD 16 project. In addition to publishing the digitized old prints on a common platform, the digitization itself is coordinated between the institutions. Related Items ( incunabula, Swiss 17th century prints, selected thematic priorities ) are digitized in parallel or added at a later stage.

The project will run from 2008 to 2013. Joint offering but is operated beyond that date. In September 2013, a total 17 687 titles were digitized.