“Many Voices” Digitisation Project

The project “Many Voices: Making the archives of democratization and public knowledge of the Austrian National Library and the House of Austrian History permanently accessible and visible”  ran until December 2025.  Its aim was to preserve, in digital form, significant sections of the collection of the House of Austrian History (hdgö) and the historical pamphlet collection of the Austrian National Library (ÖNB) and to make these objects available online through a variety of channels.

Since its founding, the hdgö has made the accessibility, transparency and multimedia dissemination of contemporary historical content through wide public access to its collection a stated objective. Thanks to the project “Material Evidence of the Development of Political Culture from the hdgö Collection”, it is now possible to offer online access to the museum’s extensive holdings, thereby expanding the scope for research into and education about the history of Austrian democracy, as well as into changes within political culture, in particular during the final years of the Habsburg Monarchy, the First and Second Republics, the Dollfuss-Schuschnigg dictatorship and the Nazi regime. The aim of the project was the comprehensive digitisation, cataloguing and public presentation of key artefacts from Austria’s history of knowledge  and politics. This supports the analytical and critical examination of the political forms and processes that shape modern-day Austria by cataloguing, providing commentary by curators and educators, and publishing, for the first time, objects that bear witness to events of national significance, turning points in political and bureaucratic structures, and processes of political consciousness-raising.

Over the course of the project, 5,000 three-dimensional objects from the hdgö collection and 20,000 items from the ÖNB’s historical pamphlet collection were catalogued and made available for use in research and history education through a multi-channel strategy. For both collections, access to the digitised holdings is possible via several portals: the Kulturpool and Europeana interfaces. In addition, the holdings of the historical pamphlet collection are available in the ÖNB’s public library catalogue and via ÖNB Digital, while the hdgö’s holdings can be accessed via the web portal of the Axiell Collections object database on the hdgö website. The creation and publication of data adhered to the F.A.I.R. principle, which ensures that data is findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable.

This project was funded by the “Digital Cultural Heritage” programme of the Federal Ministry of Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport (BMKÖS now BMWKMS)  from September 2024 to December 2025.

Contact:

Mara Metzmacher, MA

Scientific project lead on “Many Voices” Digital Cultural Heritage

T: +43 1 53410 – 595

M: +43 664 529 27 72

mara.metzmacher@hdgoe.at