Get to know our ongoing third-party funded projects:
DFG Project “Digitization of Medieval Manuscript Collections in the Rhineland Episcopal Cities of Speyer, Worms, and Mainz”
Together with the Mainz City Library and the Rhineland-Palatinate State Library Center, Mainz University Library is digitizing medieval manuscripts from Mainz, Worms and Speyer. In the project, which is funded by the German Research Foundation, around 450 manuscripts from thirteen cultural institutions in the three cities will be scanned from 2024 to 2026 in the digitization center of the Mainz University Library and presented via Gutenberg Capture. This makes a historically significant collection available online for the first time, opening it up to research in book history and related fields. In the Middle Ages, the three Rhenish episcopal cities held a leading political, religious and economic position and formed an outstanding region of cultural tradition and manuscript production. At the same time, the history of the manuscripts’ transmission has been obscured by modern wars and the upheavals following the French Revolution. In many cases, the manuscript holdings are fragmented and distributed among several regional institutions. This is where the project comes in: A cross-disciplinary initiative to comprehensively catalogue and digitize all manuscripts held in the three cities. In addition to digitization, the project aims to conduct the first-ever scholarly cataloging and documentation of the watermarks in the Worms and Speyer manuscripts. The cataloging is carried out in the Manuscript Portal, the central online portal for book manuscripts in German collections.
Your contact person for the project Digitization of Medieval Manuscript Collections:
FOLIO
With funding from the Ministry of Science and Health, the Mainz University Library is participating in the development of the open-source software FOLIO, which offers an alternative to the commercial, cloud-based library management systems currently available. FOLIO offers the opportunity to develop customized, needs-based solutions for metadata management, acquisition processes, electronic resource management, circulation, user management, and software administration.
Together with its partner libraries in Hesse and supported with resources from the State of Rhineland-Palatinate’s Corona special fund, Mainz University Library will put FOLIO into operation over the next few years. It will replace the current library management system PICA.
Your contact for FOLIO:
Cultural Heritage Portal
As part of its digital strategy the state of Rhineland-Palatinate has decided to set up a digital state portal on cultural heritage, via which digital copies of Rhineland-Palatinate's cultural heritage can be made available and showcased. The project, funded by the Ministry of Family Affairs, Women, Culture and Integration, aims to expand the scope, visibility, and use of the cultural heritage of Rhineland-Palatinate and the institutions that preserve it across disciplines. It serves as a central access point for the region’s digitized cultural heritage, providing unified access to digital collections from and relating to Rhineland-Palatinate. At its launch, the portal will offer two core features. First, it will provide a searchable repository of digital objects and descriptive metadata from participating institutions. Users will be able to filter, search, and explore these collections in a variety of ways, making it easier to discover and access cultural heritage materials. Using a shared metadata framework, the portal brings together digital objects from archives, museums, libraries, and other cultural heritage institutions, enriching and linking them to make them easier to discover and explore. A virtual exhibition platform offers engaging new ways to explore this diverse collection through thematic exhibitions and in-depth explorations. In addition, the portal will serve as an aggregator for national and international cultural heritage platforms, including the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek and Europeana.
Your contact for the Cultural Heritage Portal:
Makerspace
Supported by the Sibylle Kalkhof-Rose Foundation, Mainz University Library is developing plans for a new makerspace. The makerspace will combine a seminar room with a fully equipped workshop, creating a collaborative environment where members of the JGU community from all disciplines can share tools, equipment, and expertise. It will provide a space to work on projects together, learn new skills, and repair or repurpose everyday items.
The plan is to have rooms equipped with modern facilities, ranging from 3D printers and laser cutters to electronics workstations and woodworking benches, as well as sewing machines and a painting area. With this initiative, the University Library aims to provide centralized and easily accessible access to digital and analog manufacturing, regardless of a student's major or prior knowledge. The makerspace will also be available for faculty to use in workshops and courses. More than just a workshop and seminar room, the makerspace is intended to be a hub for creative thinkers, hobbyists, and makers who enjoy designing, building, and shaping the future together.
In addition to serving the university community, the makerspace will offer designated open hours when anyone with a library card can use the equipment, along with events that are open to the public. In this way, the makerspace will help bring topics such as DIY, repair culture, open-source technologies, and emerging technologies to the broader community.
Your contact person for the Makerspace:
Open Access Publishing
The German Research Foundation (DFG) supports the development of open access as a means of promoting open and research-friendly communication in the sciences.
Under the DFG's “Open Access Publication Costs” funding program, a fixed grant has been awarded for the 2025–2027 funding period to support the open access publication of scholarly research. Open access plays a vital role in advancing scholarly communication, and publication costs should reflect that purpose. The program's overarching goal is to support the transition to open access by reshaping funding models while increasing transparency around the costs of publishing research in open access.
In response to these developments, the DFG is calling for libraries to centrally manage publication funding and serve as the primary point of contact. It also encourages the establishment of standardized, automated processes for tracking publication output and costs.
The University Library participates in agreements with numerous publishers to reduce costs and streamline the publication process for researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and University Medical Center Mainz. An overview of the contracts as well as the current funding conditions can be found on our Open Access page.
Your contact for the DFG funding program “Open Access Publication Funding”:
BMFTR Research Project KOSTIMA
The research project “Counter-Hegemonic Voices in Music Archives (KOSTIMA): Political Interpretations, Contextualizations, and Contemporary Connections” (Grant Number 01UQ2304A) is funded by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology, and Space (BMFTR) under the funding program “Networking–Exploring–Researching.” Alliance for University Collections II". The joint project is coordinated by the University Library of JGU Mainz and plans to catalog and research the collections of the African Music Archives (AMA) in Mainz, the European Center for Jewish Music (EZJM) in Hanover, and the Center for World Music (CWM) in Hildesheim. Central to the study of musical archival materials is the question of the counter-hegemonic messages they contain and their placement within social contexts.
The Mainz subproject focuses on song lyrics from the African Music Archive's collection of Congolese music. These reflect a period of diverse political upheaval in the Congo under the authoritarian regime of President Mobutu. The perspective of a wide variety of artists handed down here includes various forms of subtle political communication that are often hidden and encoded–and have not yet been analyzed in detail. This is where the project comes in. Using cognitive and structural linguistic approaches, it examines how political messages are embedded in song lyrics and explores the intertextual relationships between them. The ethnomusicological subproject examines how Congolese artists' lyrics reflect social realities and political developments. It also explores how these texts shape political discourse in indirect and often subversive ways, while revealing the broader social dynamics woven into them.
The research findings will be published as open access and communicated to a broad public through a multilingual Scrollytelling feature and a traveling exhibition.
Duration: 2023-2027
Your contact persons for the KOSTIMA research project:
For the Mainz subproject:
Open Science
In recent years, Open Science has become significantly more important for early-career researchers. Making research data, publications, and collaborative networks more accessible speeds the exchange of knowledge and fosters innovation through collaboration. Greater transparency and reproducibility also strengthen the quality and credibility of research.
Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and its affiliated institutions actively support this culture of open science. The University Library (UB) offers resources and infrastructure to promote Open Science and, since September 2024, has been developing continuing education programs specifically tailored to early-career researchers. With the addition of a new position in the Open Science division, the Center for Academic Integrity (AkIn) will expand its outreach efforts through a comprehensive program.
This program, which is based on the core principles of Open Science, will combine self-directed learning with in-person sessions and be supported by a variety of learning materials.
The program begins with an introduction to the concept of open science and its many dimensions, providing participants with a solid foundation for the topics that follow. This step-by-step approach introduces early-career researchers to the principles of open science and prepares them for transparent and collaborative research practices.
Your contact person for Open Science in the Academic Integrity Competence Center:
