Thanks to funding from the DFG, the Manuscripta Mediaevalia online portal had provided a national union catalog for manuscripts in German collections since the late 1990s. When it was shut down in December 2023, Manuscripta Mediaevalia contained information on more than 100,000 manuscripts (not only from German institutions) and could also be used as a reference for digital copies.

The technically outdated Manuscripta Mediaevalia service, which was unsatisfactory in terms of current usage requirements, has now been completely replaced: On December 20, 2017, the DFG approved an application for the development of a new Handschriftenportal, which could prove central text and image information on book manuscripts from the Middle Ages and modern times and take over all previous content from Manuscripta Mediaevalia.

The Handschriftenportal is being developed in-house by four large libraries, which are also manuscript centers, on the basis of open source software. The project group is made up of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz (SBB-PK), the Leipzig University Library (UBL), the Herzog-August-Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel (HAB) and the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich (BSB).

The “Description of the project” (project phase 1 and project phase 2) from the DFG proposal provides information on the exact content of the project. All interested communities are to be continuously and intensively involved in the development.