About swisscollections
swisscollections is your gateway to historical and modern collections in Swiss libraries and archives. In swisscollections, you can find manuscripts, archive materials, unpublished papers, old and rare books, prints, musical materials, images, maps, and bibliographies. It is a metacatalogue that draws on various data pools.
swisscollections and swisscovery
As a complement to swisscovery, the Swiss national library platform, swisscollections provides a specialized and differentiated search of collections and special holdings, drawing on swisscovery and other sources. Complementing each other, the search platforms of swisscollections and swisscovery differ in focus and target groups: while swisscollections offers differentiated search forms to a specific target group, swisscovery focuses on offering services for library users and supplying library resources.
The swisscollections Association
The swisscollections metacatalogue is operated on behalf of the swisscollections Association, the purpose of which is to set up and further develop the metacatalogue. The swisscollections Association was formed in December 2020 as successor of the HAN association founded in March 2011. Its members are the Cantonal Library of Aargau, the Cantonal Library of Appenzell Ausserrhoden, the Cantonal Library Vadiana of St. Gallen, the Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen, the University Library of Basel, the University Library of Bern, the Central and University Library of Lucerne, the Central Library of Solothurn, and the Central Library of Zurich. As the sponsoring association, it determines the strategic and normative principles of the swisscollections metacatalogue.
Apart from the member institutions of the sponsoring association, the swisscollections metacatalogue also includes other archives and libraries. While the University Library of Basel is responsible for operating the metacatalogue, the cataloguing work that it is based on is usually done independently by the individual partner institutions. The opportunity of participating actively in specific projects and in elaborating and further developing the cataloguing principles is open to all partners and is explicitly welcomed.
In principle, all institutions with special holdings and special collections that would like to make these accessible to a wider public are welcome to participate in the metacatalogue and the swisscollections Association. To get in touch with us, please contact the coordinator: info@swisscollections.ch
Vereinsvorstand:
- Stefan Wiederkehr, Zentralbibliothek Zürich, Präsident
- Heidi Eisenhut, Kantonsbibliothek Appenzell Ausserrhoden, Vizepräsidentin
- Daniel Tschirren, Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern, Vorstandsmitglied
Vereinsstatuten (PDF)
Technology
swisscollections exclusively uses open-source software components.
- User inferface: vufind
- Search engine: Apache Solr
- Data platform: Apache Kafka
- Infrastructure: Kubernetes cluster, University Basel IT-Services