Digitisation of the Goussen Library

the Goussen library collection is a specialist library for oriental
church history. It contains printed books in Western classical and
modern languages, but predominantly printed books in oriental languages
such as Syrian, Coptic, Ethiopian, Arabic, Armenian and Georgian
languages from the 16th to the 20th century (the focus is on the 18th
and the 19th century). The former owner Heinrich Goussen (1863 – 1927)
collected nearly every printed book within the language groups that had
ever been published about the subject. The collection contains numerous
rare or valuable oriental printed books. There could hardly a collection
be put together as completely as here, not even from the holdings of
large European libraries.

In 2007 the Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Bonn digitised approx.
850 printed books of the Goussen library collection under a programme of
the State of North Rhine-Westphalia to preserve its holdings. It
includes all titles published in Europe until 1800, all publications in
the original language as well as all publications that were published
outside Europe. For copyright reasons the year 1900 was chosen as the
last year of publication to be included in the digitisation project. The
digitisation was generally conducted by means of a microfilm, which was
produced first. Books with special features (book(s or items) printed in
red and black ink, items with illustrations, interleaved copies as well
as most of the printed books published until 1800) were digitised in
colour.

You can find the images right here:

http://s2w.hbz-nrw.de/ulbbn/nav/classification/16431?lang=en

If you have any questions or comments regarding our project please don´t
hesitate to contact us.