This service provides an image-based similarity search. The only criterion is the similarity of motifs based on characteristics such as colors, textures, shapes and contrasts. The image-based similarity search currently offers access to a growing portfolio of 2,707,596 digitized works from the Bavarian State Library out of 12 centuries (manuscripts, rare books, maps). These works belong to the absolute core and peak inventory of the cultural heritage of Bavaria and also to the national patrimony. Overall, 57 million images are available. It was set up in cooperation with Fraunhofer-Institut für Nachrichtentechnik.
With its historical stock of more than 2.4 million digitized books, the Bavarian State Library is one of the most important cultural institutions in the world. This large collection consists mainly of copyright-free works from the 8th to the 20th century with a larg variety of content - from the handwritten medieval Bible to 1920s' tabloids. The high pace of mass digitization during the recent years had its price - indexing of the content lags behind, especially in works which have not been mechanically reprocessed and made accessible by means of Optical Character Recognition (OCR). This applies in particular to medieval manuscripts, old printings and other special collections. Therefore, most of the images were still largely hidden to the user and could only be detected by manual skimming on the screen. because of this, the Bavarian State Library, together with the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute in Berlin, developed this service for a similarity-based image search. It identifies image contents of all 2.4 million digital images automatically.
With its historical stock of more than 2.4 million digitized books, the Bavarian State Library is one of the most important cultural institutions in the world. This large collection consists mainly of copyright-free works from the 8th to the 20th century with a larg variety of content - from the handwritten medieval Bible to 1920s' tabloids. The high pace of mass digitization during the recent years had its price - indexing of the content lags behind, especially in works which have not been mechanically reprocessed and made accessible by means of Optical Character Recognition (OCR). This applies in particular to medieval manuscripts, old printings and other special collections. Therefore, most of the images were still largely hidden to the user and could only be detected by manual skimming on the screen. because of this, the Bavarian State Library, together with the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute in Berlin, developed this service for a similarity-based image search. It identifies image contents of all 2.4 million digital images automatically.
