Berlin State Library (2024). Metadata of the Digitized Collections of the Berlin State Library (SBB)

The motivation for creating this dataset was to enable research on the basis of metadata which are available in a cultural heritage institution on a large scale. Libraries such as the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Berlin State Library (SBB) typically provide three kinds of data: Images (scans of books, illustrations contained in the scanned material, or else), texts (OCR'd from digitized books or manuscripts), and metadata. However, metadata form an underresearched resource, which is lamentable: These metadata are of a high quality since they have been established by trained librarians, archivists, or other cultural heritage practitioners. The publication of a set of metadata of more than 200.000 works aims therefore at providing an underresearched high-quality type of data. The basic interest of the funder in this data publication is the stimulation of innovation.

The dataset consists of a single table containing the metadata of all 219.419 works which were available in the Digitized Collections of the Berlin State Library (SBB) on July 29th, 2024. The size of the .parquet file is about 46 MB.