The interview was conducted with Almut Galos, who was head of stock development and expansion until March 2025. She dealt intensively with the colonial holdings and supported the digitisation process.
ifa: How did the ifa Library become aware of the issue of decolonialisation?
Almut Galos: The Federal Foreign Office provided funding for digitisation, and colonialism was a focal topic. It was clear to us that we have sufficient copyright-free holdings. So it was decided that the first step would be to digitise these to make these sources accessible for research. It was in 2019 that we really got going. In particular, Nora Schmid’s research programme study "A Decolonial Approach to Open Access Repositories" provided the decolonial perspective. That study gave us many ideas, particularly relating to the subject of decolonialisation.
Which books have been published so far?
We have published 109 titles from four countries. They all have colonial connections. Meanwhile, we have digitised more, including aspects such as “Germans abroad ” or "Rare books". Rare books are very old titles in our holdings that are digitised partly because they should not be handled too often as they are so old and historical. They were published between 1826 and 1925, a cut-off point we chose for copyright reasons. We have digitised more works which are not online yet, because they are still subject to copyright. So we can put more online in the years ahead. Interestingly, almost all the works are in German – there is only one English title. And the type of publications is interesting too - mainly monographs – although I did also find some lectures and dissertations. And the subjects include missions, but also economics, law, many travel reports as well, of course, but also things like agricultural guidebooks. So there is a very wide range of literature dating back to that period.
You mentioned that the works originate from four countries. Which ones?
Germany, Switzerland, where there were many missions, the USA and Namibia
You spoke of copyright earlier. How important is a work’s rarity value and who decides which books will be digitised?
For one thing, copyright plays a role – works may not be published online until at least 70 years after an author’s death. We also consider which titles are only extant here at the ifa Library. Our historical holdings in particular, and the collection of German-language publications abroad include many titles that do not exist anywhere else. Digitisation is a way of conserving these online. That is particularly important for preserving newspapers. Newspaper is even more brittle than book paper.
How long does it take to digitise a book?
That depends on which method is used. Some service providers use scanners with an automatic page-turning function while others use student assistants to scan each page manually, which is also relatively fast. The main effort is post-processing. We receive raw data which we upload via a workflow tool. Then we have to add the metadata – the author, publisher, date of publication, number of pages and table of contents. That has to be done in order to be able to retrieve the individual chapters. When that has been completed, a certain quality control needs to be carried out and finally, the data have to be put into the catalogue database. That task is done by librarians. A huge amount of data is amassed in this process. That is why we have used funding to buy our own server, which is cheaper than external hosting in the long term.
How much storage is required?
We needed 60 terabytes for the newspaper data. And that means just newspapers.
Is it possible to do a text search in digitised works?
Yes, using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology. 80 to 90 percent of texts in modern fonts are accurate, but OCR still has trouble with Gothic script.
Many historical works contain racist or colonial concepts. How does the library deal with that?
That is a major issue, not only in our library, but generally. Some collections, for example, archive video material from the Nazi period. The University Library in Frankfurt has a collection of photographs from the colonial period. Some of these are horrific pictures with trigger warnings attached. In our case, the project did not initially involve academic contextualisation. That is the step we now wish to take to contextualise precisely such material with an accompanying text or something similar. By so doing, we can indicate that this is problematic material from that period. Many libraries face the real problem that digitalisation funding does not usually include reappraisal. Conferences, exchanges and a network are addressing this issue and are endeavouring to move forward in this area. Fortunately, change is afoot, but we are still in the process of addressing that as the next step in our project.
Are there plans to academically classify and contextualise the digitised works? What might an academic reappraisal involve?
We are concerned to deal with this properly, to classify things properly. I presented the project at ifa’s Science Festival last year, which led to a contact with a lecturer at the University of Tübingen. A new seminar will be held in the summer semester 2025 that will analyse holdings from the ifa Library with colonial connections. A public event will be held on the subject in September 2025. And we can share that example with the library community. We are looking forward to that, because students take a different approach to working with the contents of these books than we do as librarians. This really is a very important project for us and we are delighted that this cooperation has come about.
And that highlights once again the importance of such events and networking. But how does an online search in digital holdings work?
DigiShelf is an online portal used by many libraries that has centrally managed search options. Users can start by searching in various different ways. I can look for a title, a collection – such as colonialism – or conduct a full text search. Contents pages containing links give users direct access to chapters and a thumbnail view makes it easier to navigate. Since the works are copyright-free, individual pages, chapters or entire books can be downloaded as PDFs. The titles can be found via central library catalogues, including holdings that have not been digitised, which can be ordered.
How can the library contribute to public debate on colonialism and historical responsibility?
We support academic reappraisal through cooperation, specialist lectures and networking. At ifa, there are projects such as the study by Nora Schmidt, which include meta-level approaches. Specialist lectures are very important if the opportunity arises, and also discussions at librarians’ conferences. Then there is networking via Facebook or on social media, but also cooperation with scientific institutions. The cooperation with the University of Tübingen is a major first step in this direction. And events like the Science Festival or networking in the library community should also help to make this issue more visible.
The library of the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations is a specialised academic library on foreign cultural and educational policy with a history of over 100 years. It supports research and provides information services for policy makers. The library is open to the public and its media and services can be used free of charge by anyone interested. Further information is available on the ifa website.
