State Institute for School Bremen

The digital archive of the LIS Bremen

Online access to Bremen's regional history for schools and the education sector

"With easydb , we were able to leave behind the existing decentralized individual software solutions and create a central web-based research and indexing platform that simplifies our work processes."

Astrid Hassenbach Center for Media State Institute for School Bremen

State Institute for School Bremen

The State Institute for Schools Bremen - LIS Bremen for short - has the task of promoting and supporting the schools in the state of Bremen in their work. One department of the LIS Bremen is the Center for Media, formerly the Landesbildstelle Bremen. At the Center for Media, professionals will find an extensive range of offerings for learning with and about media.

In addition to the training courses and workshops, the media rental service and Archive are permanent features of the media center. These consist of the photo archive with a stock of about 400,000 analog and 20,000 digital images and the state film archive with about 3,500 films. Both Archive document regional history in Bremen.

The digital agenda

In the course of digitizing the archive, LIS Bremen purchased the software easydb in 2014 to provide the specialist staff with a suitable tool for archiving and providing digital material. Historical to current photographs as well as historical films are managed with easydb . The archive's entire holdings are now gradually being digitally transferred to the database.

Requirements profile for digital media

With the acquisition of the software, the Center for Media team was able to define the data structure and take into account current issues regarding the acquisition of the material. An important requirement was color reliability in the image display. Color management is supported by the software and the color profile is correctly preserved during color space conversions and versioning within easydb . At the same time, the data fields for describing the information were defined. To ensure uniform recording of the inventory, the archive team developed thesauri for place assignments, subject names, keywords and persons, which can be used in the associated fields and expanded as required. The basic idea is that the thesauri can be used for both photos and films.

In addition to information about the content, person and form, the metadata for the correct management and use of the media contains the signature as well as usage rights and terms of use. The download of the media is possible in different formats, as easydb calculates several versions for each medium.

Within the LIS Bremen, approximately 120 employees will in future be able to access the internal data of Archive , which is accessible in its own pool. Web-based access to easydb makes searching the archive material noticeably easier. Pools and workbooks help to structure the archive data in several ways. They support workflows, such as approval processes, and allow user-specific structuring of the holdings, e.g. by creating collections. In the future, the entire archive will be accessible to teachers and students via a web browser. In a further expansion stage, all persons with an interest in images and films in the state of Bremen, such as journalists, publishers, companies and private individuals, will be able to order archive material online.

The development of the online archive not only makes access to the archive material faster and easier, but also promotes the possibility of using the archive's full potential. In the future, it will be possible to research images and videos about Bremen that might have gone unnoticed in their analog existence.

For more information, contact the Center for Media at LIS Bremen and www.lis.bremen.de.

Case study as PDF