Digital collections

Overview

Facing the rich variety of digital collections it has a certain advantage to group them into several main categories. Books, archival records and images have each been put here into a category: digital libraries, digital archives and digital image collections.The sheer number of digital libraries is sufficient reason to present them separately, notwithstanding the fact that some libraries hold archival collections as well. Many digital collections present a great variety of sources. It is true one cannot separate books from documents and images. A better understanding of and growing insight to digital collections for legal history will surely be reflected in their representation on this website, and thus virtual exhibitions appear on a separate page.

This page offers an overview of image collections. The classic collections for legal iconography are present here, too, and special subjects such as the Sachsenspiegel, emblem books and portraits.

Digital heritage portals

• MICHAEL: Multilingual Inventory of Cultural Heritage in Europe – a useful site for finding digitized information, also for individual countries:
  

  http://www.michael-portal.de/ for Germany

  http://www.michael-culture.gr/mpf/pub-mpf/index.html for Greece

  http://michael-culture.hu/pub-mpf/index.html for Hungary

  http://michael-culture.it/ for Italy

  http://www.michael-culture.nl/mpf/pub-mpf/index.html for The Netherlands

  http://www.michael-culture.pl:8080/mpf/pub-mpf/index.html for Poland

• Patrimoine numérique – the MICHAEL portal to digitized collections in France
• Hispana – a portal to digital collections in Spain
• Digicoord – a portal to digitization projects in Switzerland; interface in French and German

Databases for legal iconography

• Rechtsikonographische Datenbank, Universität Graz
• Rechtsarchäologische Sammlung Karl von Amira, Leopold-Wenger-Institut für Rechtsgeschichte and Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich
• Bilddatenbank, Abteilung Rechtsvisualisierung, Zentrum für Rechtsgeschichtliche Forschung, Universität Zürich – with for example the Bader-Künnsberg collection for legal iconography, the Sammlung Pfenninger for criminology and notarial signets
• Dutch database for legal iconography, NCRD, The Hague, Royal Library – only for cardholders of the Royal Library and subscribing libraries; however, some 12,000 images are now accessible at the Memory of the Netherlands portal
• RechtsAlterTümer – online, Austrian Academy of Sciences – a database on objects and texts related to Austrian legal history
• REALonline, Institut für Realienkunde des Mittelaters und der Frühen Neuzeit, Krems an der Donau – this image database allows you to search for iconographic themes in medieval images
• Rechtsdenkmäler im Wald- und Weinviertel und Galgen in Österreich, Stefan Lefnaer – a private site on legal archaeology and iconography in Austria
• Fondo Antico – Immagini della Giustizia, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia – an online exhibition with a bibliography
• Iconographies, Centre d’Histoire du Droit, Université Rennes-I – several collections from the Ancien Régime to the twentieth century
• Representing Justice, Yale Law School, Lilian Goldman Law Library – a website with images from the book on legal iconography by Dennis Curtis and Judith Resnik, to be viewed together with the images collected in the Flickr gallery of YLS’s Rare Book Room

In Frankfurt am Main the Sammlug Karl Frölich will be digitized. Among the tools helping iconographic research one should mention for example the Reallexikon zur Deutschen Kunstgeschichte which is partially (A-F) searchable online. A part of the website of the Index of Christian Art at Princeton is free accessible online. You can consult more at subscribing libraries and at the few institutions with a complete copy (Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C.; Getty Center, Los Angeles; Institute for Art History, Utrecht). Iconclass offers a systematic classification of subjects in art. This website is free accessible, but in practice it is useful to get acquainted first with Iconclass with an image database using this classification system. The Art and Architecture Thesaurus of the Getty Center is another classification system which can help your research.

General historical image collections - organized in alphabetical order by countries

An amazing variety of links for image collections is presented by Margaret Vail Anderson on her website Digital Librarian.

• Picture Australia – a portal to image collections in Australia
• Photosearch, National Archives, Australia
• Bildarchiv Austria, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna – collections from several periods
• Belgica, Royal Library, Brussels – books and images, maps and medals; interface in Dutch and French
• Images Canada – a portal to Canadian image collections
• Agence photographique, Musées nationaux
• Joconde – a searchable database with images from French museums
• Culture: Moteur des collections – a meta-catalogue for searches in major French cultural institutions
• Bibliothèque numérique de l’Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art – books, images, iconographic research, archives and manuscripts
• Les Bibliothèques Virtuelles Humanistes: Recherche Iconclass, Université de Tours – searching illustrations -also with Iconclass- in digitized early editions of works by humanists
• Digitales Bildarchiv des Bundesarchivs, Koblenz
• Deutsche Fotothek, Sächsische Landes- und Universitätsbibliothek, Dresden – also for searching paintings, drawings and engravings
• Bildarchiv, Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin
• SMB-digital, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin-Preussischer Kulturbesitz – a portal for images from the collections of nearly twenty museums in Berlin
• Bildindex der Kunst und Architektur, Bildarchiv Foto Marburg – a search portal to many German collections
• BSB-CodIcon Online, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich – the manuscripts of the Codices iconographici collection are being digitized; the manuscripts show for example portraits, heraldic signs, seals, military scenes and fortifications
• Bildsuche, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich – online searching for similar images in a database with 4 million images, with an additional search interface for woodcuts in incunables
• Prometheus-Bildarchiv, Universität Köln - a portal to 59 German databases, among them the Lichtbildarchiv Älterer Originalurkunden bis 1250 (Marburg), with medieval charters until 1250, REQUIEM (Berlin), Renaissance sepulchral monuments for cardinals and popes, and the Lexikon der Revolutions-Ikonographie (Giessen)
• Virtuelles Kupferstichkabinett, Herzorg-Anton-Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig and Herzog-August-Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel – normal search facilities and also Iconclass
• German History in Documents and Images, German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C.
• Plakat-Datenbank der Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Stuttgart – 30,000 German posters from 1870 onwards; at this moment some 2,500 of them are already visible
• BPKgate – 12 million images from German, French and British museums; low resolution only donwloadable with a watermark, and paying for high resolution
• British Printed Images to 1700
• Collection Database, British Museum, London
• British Museum Images – showing all strengths of the immense collections
• Collections Victoria & Albert Museum, London
• VADS – The Online Resource for Visual Arts – a portal to images in many British collections
• Images Online, British Library, London
• National Archives, Image Library
• Scotlands Images – for searching images in Scottish collections
• Casglu’r Tlysau- Gathering the Jewels – a portal to Welsh heritage and culture
• Fototeca Nazionale, Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali – images from Italy
• Fotothek, Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome – images from Rome’s most important library for art history
• Photothek, Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florence
• Beeldbank, Nationaal Archief, The Hague – 500,000 images at the Dutch National Archives; more Dutch image collections are mentioned here and in another overview focusing on regional and local materials
• Thematis Erfgoed Portaal – until 2013 this portal led you to the collections, including images, of several Dutch municipal and regional archives
• Beeldbank Bibliopolis, Royal Library, The Hague – searching for images concerning Dutch book history
• Bijzondere Collecties, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Universiteit van Amsterdam – the Special Collections contain for instance texts by Dirk Coornhert and the Suriname collection; you can search all image collections together
• The Memory of The Netherlands – a portal to many digital collections of Dutch cultural and historic institutions, including important image collections
• Picture collections of the Royal Netherlands Institute of South East Asian and Caribbean Studies, Leiden
• Carïbisch Erfgoed [Caribbean Heritage], Stadsmuseum Tilburg – digitized photographs between 1886 and 1970  from the Brothers of  Tilburg, a Dutch Catholic educational congregation active in Surinam and the Dutch Antilles
• Atlas of Mutual Heritage – the Dutch National Archives and the Rijksmuseum are among the institutions which present digitized images and books on the history of the Dutch West India Company and East India Company
• Atlas van Stolk, Schielandshuis, Rotterdam – some 35,000 images are already accessible in the database of this collection of 150,000 prints concerning Dutch history
• Matapihi - a portal to digital collections in New Zealand
• American Memory, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. – 22 digitized collections with photographs, and this is just the start
• Digital Gallery, New York Public Library
• Digital Collections, The Getty Research Institute
• Opening History: U.S. History Resources from Libraries, Museums and Archives, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign – a portal to digital collections

For research in the field of art history one can find support at the following websites

• Institut für Kunst- und Bildgeschichte: Links, Humboldt Universität, Berlin – a useful link collection
• Links collection, Netherlands Institute for Art History, The Hague – fifteen pages with links
• Artlibraries.net: Virtual Catalog for Art History, Universität Karlsruhe – a meta-catalog to several important art libraries worldwide, itself a part of ArtHistoricum.net, Virtuelle Fachbibliothek Kunstgeschichte (interface in German, English and French)
• Art-Guide, Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg and Sächsische Landes- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden – a searchable database for online resources; interface in German and English

Thematic image collections

A rather special place in legal iconography is traditionally given to the codices picturati, the illuminated manuscripts of the Sachsenspiegel:

• The Wolfenbüttler manuscript – also reachable at the digital library of the Herzog-August-Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel
• The Dresden manuscript – with a useful introduction and additional information
• The Heidelberg manuscript
• The Oldenburg manuscript

Emblem books form a particular source of images. Andrea Alciato (1492-1550), himself a legal scholar, founded the genre with his Emblemata (1531). Here some collections with digitized emblem books which can be searched using Iconclass. These sites point to other digitized collections.

• Emblem Project Utrecht – 27 emblem books printed in the Low Countries
• Glasgow University Emblem Project – with collections of French and Italian emblem books, and several editions of Alciato’s collection

Portraits of lawyers have always enjoyed interest. Some databases can help you to find images of them, many more image databases are listed by the Netherlands Institute for Art History:

• RKDPortraits, Netherlands Institute for Art History, The Hague - using the term “jurist” in the first search field of the Dutch search interface ensures you to get images of portraits of Dutch lawyers
• Academische Collecties: Portretten – eight portrait collections at Dutch universities
• Legal Portraits Online, Harvard Law School Library – more than 4000 images
• Porträtdatenbank, Franckesche Stiftungen zu Halle (Saale) – using “Jurist” in the field Berufe (professions) and filtering by place name (Orte) brings you to many German lawyers
• Digitaler Portraitindex, Fotoarchiv Marburg – again it is by using “Jurist” in the field Berufe (professions) that you can find many portraits from eight German and Austrian collections
• Bildindex der Kunst und Architektur, Marburg - you can search for names in the section Porträts of this database for many German catalogues
• Porträtsammlung, Staats- und Stadtbibliothek, Augsburg – some 3700 images
• Portraitsammlung, Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek, Cologne
• Tripota – Trierer Porträtdatenbank, Universität Trier – some 8,000 images; note also the splendid links page to similar collections worldwide
• Regensburger Porträtgalerie , Universität Regensburg – 5,000 portraits, in particular from the Thurn und Taxis collection
• Porträtsammlungen der Universität Tübingen – some 10,000 images, searchable in many ways, including with Iconclass
• National Portrait Gallery, London – images of 160,000 portraits
• National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. – with both search possibilities for its own collections and the Catalog of American Portraits
• Historical and Public Figures: A General Portrait File to the 1920s, New York Public Library – a collection of 30.000 photographs, and NYPL has more collections
• Portrait Portal, Library and Archives Canada – a database with a generous selection of Canadian portraits
• FACIES, Biblioteca Comunale dell’Archiginnasio, Bologna – in this collection, too, you can search among some 10,000 old portraits for specific occupations, such as giurista