Projects

TMPersonalLibrary

Aim of the project

  • Evaluation of his entire personal library for books containing marginalia, i.e. handwritten notes and markings
  • Integral digitization of books containing marginalia
  • Transcription of the marginalia
  • Conception and introduction of a front-end for searching and displaying marginalia

Description of the project

The most important holdings in the Thomas Mann Archive include Thomas Mann's personal library, which contains numerous books with notes and markings made by the author's own hand. To this day, there is no access to all the marginalia important for understanding the production of the author's works. With the project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, all the marginalia left in Mann's personal library are to be digitized, transcribed and rendered searchable for research in a contemporary way.   

Moreover, the digitization project also performs a conservational function as the physical use of the unique titles is reduced thanks to this novel form of access.

Synergies and context

In the autumn of 2015, the Swiss National Science Foundation approved a project application submitted by Professor Andreas Kilcher (ETH Zurich, GESS Department) in collaboration with the ETH Library.

The project is to be implemented in collaboration with:

The resulting application will constitute a valuable addition to the archival database TMA_online introduced in 2015.

Cooperation partners

GESS, Chair of Literature and Cultural Studies

Timeframe, sequence

April 2016 to March 2019

Project team 2016–2019

  • Project head: Katrin Keller
  • Technical management: Michael Ehrismann
  • Indexing sub-project head: Anke Jaspers
  • Digitisation sub-project head : Roman Jehli, Regina Wanger
  • Scientific collaborators: Manuel Bamert, Martina Schönbächler
  • Student assistants – digitisation
  • Student assistants – indexing

Completed projects