Whether in artefacts, archives or libraries – the world is full of cultural treasures. Discovering, researching and preserving this cultural diversity, and making it accessible to both the academic community and the general public, is one of the most important tasks of the humanities and social sciences.
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Who are we? Where do we come from? What defines us – then and now? Our cultural heritage reflects our values, norms, symbols and forms of communication, which form the basis of all socialisation. They create the common ground for social cohesion and, at the same time, for the discussion and evaluation of courses of action, decisions and judgements. Time and time again.
For years, the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) has been supporting researchers in keeping this cultural heritage alive and has launched several funding programmes to this end.
There are currently over 1,3001,193 collections at 135 universities and higher education institutions77 higher education institutions in Germany, where several million objects are preserved and utilised. University collections form part of the material cultural heritage of the sciences. They serve as research infrastructure for various disciplines within the humanities and social sciences, as well as the natural and technical sciences. Direct engagement with the collection objects and the organisational principles of collections helps to answer scientific questions or to pose entirely new ones.
To ensure that collections can better contribute to the cataloguing, preservation, dissemination and accessibility of our cultural heritage, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMFTR) published the funding guidelines ‘Networking – Cataloguing – Research. Alliance for University Collections’. Within this framework, a total of 15 cooperation projects between universities and museums were funded with around 9 million euros between 2016 and 2021.
In 2021, a new edition of the funding guidelines was published once again. A central element of these funding guidelines is the accompanying project of the “Coordination Office for Academic University Collections”, which supports, among other things, networking, knowledge transfer and the integration of results into the broader collection community in Germany. The projects currently receiving funding will run until 2027.
University collections form part of the material cultural heritage of the sciences. They serve as research infrastructure for various disciplines within the humanities and social sciences, as well as the natural and technical sciences. Direct engagement with the collection objects and the principles governing collections helps to answer scientific questions or to pose entirely new ones. To enable the collections to contribute more effectively to the cataloguing, preservation, dissemination and accessibility of our cultural heritage, the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) launched the aforementioned funding programme “Networking – Cataloguing – Research. Alliance for University Collections”, and: 15 (collaborative) projects were funded within this framework between 2016 and 2020 with a total of just over 9 million euros in funding. In 2021, the funding guidelines were published once again. In addition to research projects focused on the humanities and social sciences, which began in mid-2023, a supporting project by the “Coordination Office for Academic University Collections” (see below) is also being funded, which, among other things, supports integration and knowledge transfer within the wider collections community in Germany. The projects will run until 2027.
The aim is to demonstrate, by way of example, the broad potential for utilising the collections through targeted collection-related research projects. By integrating the holdings into research, the funding also provides sustainable impetus in areas such as collection management and cataloguing, collection digitisation, and conservation and restoration. Furthermore, the collections are given the opportunity to form alliances with resource-rich external or internal university partners. For example, they can involve museum partners who provide advice and support on digitisation or conservation issues, presentation techniques, inventorying or teaching formats.
The Coordination Centre for Academic University Collections in Germany, funded by the BMFTR from 2012 to 2022, supports the visibility and usability of academic collections nationwide. From 2022 to 2027, it will implement the aforementioned accompanying project under the BMFTR funding guideline ‘Alliance for University Collections II’.
Since 2021, the BMFTR has also been funding a pilot project at the Forum Wissen at the University of Göttingen in collaboration with the Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture. Until the end of 2026, research will be conducted here into how university collections and interdisciplinary research can be translated into various formats for science communication and knowledge transfer and made visible to society.
Cultural heritage holds significant potential for shaping the future of society. Looking to the past is essential for understanding and addressing current social developments. This includes research into the history of the GDR.
