Specialist Information

How can an analog paper card index consisting of four card cabinets be converted into a structured, machine-readable data table? Forty students in the Bachelor’s program in Archival Studies at the Data Literacy Lab of the Potsdam University of Applied Sciences tackled this question.

The project was based on the archival maintenance card index from the Brandenburg State Office for Archives and Public Libraries, dating from the 1930s and 1940s. The students processed the collection in several steps: from digitization through automatic text recognition and transcription using Transkribus to data cleaning and enrichment with OpenRefine.

The project also raised fundamental questions about data quality and modeling: How can the authenticity of the original data be preserved? What data conventions are necessary for consistent data entry? How are editing history records documented? And how can an efficient and traceable workflow be developed for such a large project group?

The students’ results and insights were presented during the 2025–26 winter semester as part of a poster presentation at the Potsdam University of Applied Sciences. The posters are available for download below.

Project Management: Prof. Dr. Karin Schwarz and Dr. Torsten Veit

• Data Literacy Lab 2025/26 (PDF, 13.59 MB)

Students Ioanna Danai Katsougiannopoulou and Ha-Thao-Suong Vu were awarded the prestigious b.i.t. online Innovation Prize for their outstanding project "Queer Treasury – Specialist Database for Academic Literature on Queer Issues". The award ceremony took place on the 25^th of June, 2025 during the 9th Library Congress in Bremen.

"Queer Treasury" aims to create a central information infrastructure on queer topics that will particularly benefit academics, educators, social workers, queer organisations and interested parties.

The full text of this paper can be found here.

The German Qualifications Framework for Archives (DQR Archiv) was adopted on the 18^th of September 2023. This quality framework ensures the quality of German archive training.

The German Qualifications Framework for Archives shows which competences are recommended for the profession of archivist.

Insights into the personal commitment of memorial site staff, the challenges of their work and new developments in memorial site education.

You can find more information on this in the following news.