The scholarly concentrated libraries find themselves  - like the whole academic sector - in a phase of restructering and adjustment. Rightly so the library users expect a fast, secure and incomplex access to digital resources.

In the course of retro-digitizing now "analogue" volumes - monographs as well as journals - are digitized on a large scale and made available in the internet. Long-term objective is a complete "World Digital Library (WDL)", in which all ever printed informations are available from any location.

There are good reasons for doing the retro-digitizing of the inventories on-site, thus in the libraries. To mention is here: to save on the transport costs, controlled careful handling of endangered stock or quick availability at the location. The deciding advantage over a external solution is that experienced library stuff can be integrated in the digitizing and indexing process.

Just the indexing of the digitized data through meta- and substructural data, as regards content, is of particular importance: searching the full text or direct navigation in the (digital) table of contents in the web browser is not possible without indexing. Also scholarly infrastructure of the next generation (like: Semantic Web) depends on metadata and can't do anything with pure scanned images.

In 1997 two centers were established in Germany, the Munich Center for Digitization (MDZ) at the BSB Munich and the Center for Retrospective Digitization, Goettingen (GDZ) at the SUB Goettingen, who were sponsored by  the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft - German Research Foundation - (DFG) in the beginning. Their aim is to bundle allready existing skills in the range of retrospective digitization, to advance systematically and to circulate information.

Cross-system solutions are developed continuously on the basis of pilot applications. Advantages of this bundling can be seen in the fact that project users take conceptual and technical advice from the centers and that one can concentrate on aspects of the content of the digitizing project. Furthermore the  recommendation of standards is possible, so that results of the project are international comparable and stay (technologically) interoperable.  

The GDZ grew rapidly to a research and service facility which has national and international reputation in the domain of retro-digitizing. Developments concerning digital libraries could be arranged through own projects considering research and production. Thus the international connection is ensured.

The GDZ was funded in 1997 as a department of the SUB sponsored by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and since then acts as a national and international service and competence center in terms of (retro-)digitizing for libraries and academic institutions. The location Goettingen enjoys some advantages for this aim: numerous projects were conducted at the SUB as a big SSG library with some invaluable historic stocks - these projects make scholarly relevant digitized data available in great quantities.

A sophisticated production workflow was developed and standardized to digitize images in great quantities with the aim to reach a critical mass of digitized materials, which should enhance the acceptance of the digital library in Germany. This workflow includes the indexing by substructural and metadata as well as the availability in the internet, but also on CD ROM or printed on demand. Beside the digitized images, which are significant for the work of the GDZ and which provide a genuine copy, the metadata and substructural indexing as a full text component allow not only specific search in the electronic indexes but also a comfortable navigation.

From the beginning the GDZ wanted to approach the world wide availability of digitized data. This necessitates the application and promotion of open but standardized data formats for image, meta- and substructural data. Therefor the international developments and efforts about the standardisation of indexing data for libraries are observed and actively participated - partially in European projects but also in such of the National Science Foundation (NSF) or the German Research Foundation (DFG). The high quality of the images ensures a later full text indexing through OCR or double keying technique if required – for example for further search reasons. The SUB Goettingen commited to an open access to digitized materials in terms of the "Berlin declaration about the open access to scholarly relevant knowledge" (10-22-2003) from the very beginning. The SUB pursued this aim consequently and assured it.