Walter Dostal (1928-2011) was a prominent representative of German-speaking socio-cultural anthropology. He left behind a collection of ethnographic visuals, including photos, slides, drawings, and film materials, which document material culture, vernacular architecture, artisanal crafts, and social life in the second half of the 20th century in Arabia. His materials were dedicated to the Institute for Social Anthropology (ISA) at the Austrian Academy of Sciences after his passing. It is possible that certain pictures were taken by other individuals accompanying Walter Dostal on his fieldwork, such as Margarete Dostal.

The digital collection offers access to the central archive holdings of the International Gustav Mahler Society. Founded in Vienna in 1955, the Society is the oldest and most important institution of international Mahler research. The holdings include numerous printed sources with original entries by Mahler and annotations by editors and performers, event programs, articles and reviews, photos and other documents.

The holdings are not only relevant for scholars in the fields of music, politics, history and culture, but also for a wider public interested in the history of Austria, the Habsburg Monarchy, Viennese Modernism and the intertwining of music and politics from the late 19th century to the present day. The collection is also of great interest to active musicians, as conducting scores and orchestral parts with handwritten entries are also part of the collection.

A collection of b/w, greyscale scans and color photographs of early German travel guides on non-European countries which were released by the Baedeker publishing house between 1875 and 1914 (5 volumes, first editions).

The collection contains digital copies and metadata of 45 exemplary manuscripts from the Vienna Dominican Convent. As is seldom realized by the interested public, monastic libraries in Austria harbour a rich cultural manuscript heritage, which they have guarded and preserved for centuries. Therefore, they open up a wide range of perspectives for all kinds of cultural studies, be it library history, book illumination, music, liturgical, intellectual and social history, indeed for all fields of historical research.

The Dominican monastery in Vienna was founded in 1225 by Duke Leopold VI of Babenberg. The newly established convent was one of the oldest in the German-speaking world and was soon to develop into an important spiritual centre. The foundation was accompanied by the establishment of a school, which in the late Middle Ages was characterized by close ties to the University of Vienna.

Today, the continuously growing library still reflects the intellectual environment of this scholarly centre as well as the rich exchange and permanent contact between the Dominicans and other religious communities. All in all, the present collection offers an insight into the exceptionally broad cultural heritage of the Viennese Order of Preachers.

The collection of medieval manuscripts from the Tyrolean Cistercian Monastery located in Stams dates to its foundation in the 13th century. With around 400 manuscripts, it contains the largest number of surviving medieval manuscripts from a Tyrolean monastery and is thus considered one of Tyrol’s most valuable cultural treasures.

Around 60 of these manuscripts can still be found on site in the Stams Abbey Library. They were digitised as part of the project “Libri Stamsenses – Digitization, indexing and virtual consolidation of the medieval manuscripts of the Stams Abbey Library” (funded as part of the “Kulturerbe digital” / BMKÖS, 2023-2024) at the University and Provincial Library of Tyrol. During the temporary dissolution of Stams Abbey during the Bavarian administration (1806-1814), over 300 manuscripts were transferred to the Lyceal Library in Innsbruck, now the University and State Library of Tyrol. While individual manuscripts have been dispersed to other institutions over the centuries, these resources were also included in the project, to virtually reunite the former manuscript collection.

The Central Library of the Franciscan Monastery in Graz holds numerous choral sources from the beginning of the 14th century to the 19th century. These manuscripts and prints have received little research attention. Just under a third of the 56 sources date from the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, two thirds from the 17th and 18th centuries, and thus form a strong, representative collection for the study of the Baroque chorale, which is little known today.

The relationship between the Italian (printed) tradition and the Austrian manuscript tradition in the musical versions of antiphons and other chants for Franciscan feasts from the late Middle Ages to the 18th century should also be noted.

The existing local choral tradition of the Franciscan Order is still largely terra incognita, despite a good source situation. While the history of Austrian music in the imperial and monastic centres of the monastic orders is relatively well known, especially with regard to the figural music of the 18th century, much remains in the dark with regard to the liturgical-musical practice of the widespread mendicants and their clientele. The cataloguing and online publication of this corpus of sources can at least partially fill this gap and enable further research.