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The (hi)stories of objects and collections have gained new interest and significance in recent years. This is largely due to the many challenges and new approaches to provenance research, museology, ‘object studies’, etc., but also to the new possibilities that the digital indexing and networking of the relevant, sometimes very heterogeneous materials and sources now open up: sales and auction catalogues, access books and inventories, photo documentations, publications, correspondence and catalogues can be comprehensively merged and thus the ‘network’ of object movements, actors and references can be developed and reconstructed in a density that has not been possible until now.

Heidelberg University Library is expanding its existing 'German Sales', service to include the ‘Heidelberg Accession Index (HAI): accession books and inventories of German collections and museums’. In doing so, it aims to make a significant contribution to the comprehensive digital indexing of the provenances of works of art, collections and actors in the field in (the Federal Republic Germany and beyond.

The starting point for the new service, which is still under construction and aims to provide the broadest possible coverage of digitally available access books and inventories of German collections and museums, are the approximately 1,000 acquisition books of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (SMB) from the years 1650 to 2010. They are still used today to document the holdings of the SMB‘s 15 collections and reflect the eventful history of Berlin's museums, their holdings and their development. Since 2014, new additions to the collections have been documented in electronic form. The digitisation took place between 2019 and 2022 as part of the research project „Provenance and Holdings. Online Publication of the Acquisition Books of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin“.

The Berlin acquisition books – around 580 volumes are already online here – are supplemented by the inventory books of the LVR-LandesMuseum Bonn, the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, the Städtisches Museum Göttingen, the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, the library of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum and the University of Heidelberg. Further holdings are in preparation. And, of course, we are always happy to hear about further collaborations – please feel free to contact us!