A significant and valuable collection of periodicals in the Gazi Husrev-bey digital library

A significant place in the overall fund of Gazi Husrev-bey Library is taken by newspapers. Versatile linguistic representation is an essential asset of the Periodicals fund. However, dominant among old newspapers are those in oriental languages. Of European languages, there are newspapers in Bosnian language written in Arabic lettering (known as Bosančica or Arebica), in Latin lettering or in Cyrillic, as well as in German as the language of Austro-Hungarian Empire that took rule of Bosnia and Herzegovina at the time.

The staff of the Gazi Husrev-bey Library, on the occasion of the 480th anniversary of the existence of this institution, worked on digitizing old periodicals. The goal of this project was primarily to provide researchers with easier access to informations and acces to the large number of rare or unique library units, with as few physical limitations as possible, and to protect original copies from further decay and damage. The digital library was officially opened and started operating in January 2018.

Today, this digital library, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, has shown the full significance and value of the project, which is reflected in the fact that almost 400,000 digital documents are used annually, and the users are researchers from all over the world