Having already digitised the Freiburg address books from 1798 to 1970 as an important historical source, the University Library Freiburg now seeks to address the missing coverage of smaller towns and rural areas in this collection. In collaboration with the Baden State Library, approximately 150 additional titles will be digitised, including some from bordering regions like Alsace, thereby achieving an almost comprehensive, region wide digitisation of address books.
Address books are a primary historical source for prosopographical, economic and social-historical research, and are consulted not only by academics but equally by citizen scientists. Address books are periodical publications and belong to the oldest urban-commercial printed materials, dating back as far as the 16th century. The state equivalent of the address book is the so-called state calendar, which originated in France during the Ancien Régime and later spread to German-speaking regions. Both traditions converge in regional address directories that record the inhabitants, authorities and businesses of a locality. At the beginning of the Second World War, 775 resident registers, 350 specialist address directories and 1,650 telephone directories were in circulation throughout the German Reich. In this project, „address books“ are classified as directories that have been published over the past centuries under various names – such as ‘Bürgerlicher Schematismus’, ‘Wegweiser’, ‘Einwohnerbuch’, ‘Adressbuch’, ‘Adress-Kalender’, ‘Fernsprechbuch’ or ‘Staats- und Adress-Kalender’.
Historical address books are often only partially preserved. As utilitarian media they were in high demand, many were lost or are now barely usable because they were printed on acidic paper. To ensure long-term preservation of their valuable information and their use, comprehensive digitisation of the surviving collections is indispensable. Since no single library holds a complete set of all address books for the historic region of Baden and its surrounding areas, the joint project of the University Library Freiburg and the Baden State Library Karlsruhe can largely close this historical gap. The digitised address books will be made available in full‑text searchable form through automatic optical character recognition (OCR) and will be made discoverable via all relevant databases, cultural portals and digital libraries.