Books, Parks, and Gardens

The cooperation project involves the digitization of rare and difficult-to-access prints and manuscripts pertaining to horticulture and landscape parks in the Gotha Research Library, the Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar, and the Thuringian University and State Library in Jena. These will be made available in Open Access. The project aims to build a bridge from the historical collections of the partner libraries to interactive communication and participation formats. Based on the systematic review, digitization, and contextualization of pertinent collections in Gotha, Weimar, and Jena, participation in book design and the strategies for popularizing and commercializing knowledge of nature across space and time will be enabled through the graphical visualization, color variations, and detailedness of published contents.

Valuable books on noble horticulture, bourgeois gardening, and botanical research are united in the historical collections of Gotha Research Library. The ducal collection reflects the maintenance of palace gardens and the development of the oldest English landscape gardens on the continent through valuable works from England, Germany, and France. The library holdings of the Thuringian Horticulture Assosiation provide instructive sources for enlightened garden practices of citizens and farmers in the resident city and region. Significant botanical works and herbaria are among the estate of the Gdańsk botanist Johann Philipp Breyne. As part of the project, it is planned to provide curated access to the popular topic of “beekeeping” based on digitized books from the unique apiarian library of the Gotha beekeeper Carl Wilhelm Kalb.