The project "The Housebooks of Nuremberg: Digital indexing and editing of depictions of craftsmen from the 15th to the 19th century" was funded by the Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft from 2007 to 2009 for a period of 15 months. The project partners were the Stadtbibliothek im Bildungscampus Nürnberg as the owner of the Housebooks and the Germanische Nationalmuseum as the information technology expert. The aim was to document the Housebooks in image and text in accordance with current standards.

As part of the project, a total of 1,689 pages and the original book covers, including the endpapers and flyleafs, were photographed using a high-resolution digital camera. While the empty backs of the written or painted leaves were also included, blank pages at the end of the books were not reproduced; the blank leaves Amb. 318.2°, f. 41r-292v and Amb. 279.2°, f. 157r-291v are therefore not included in the database. In total, the database contains:

• 1,171 portraits of craftsmen, the so-called brothers
• 72 pages with texts or with images including 45 supervisors of the foundations
• 27 portraits of cooks
• 26 depictions of artisans
• 25 pages with texts on the use of the books or images such as a series of coats of arms or views of buildings 

The captions of the portraits have been fully transcribed, and for each image a short description has been supplied. In addition to codicological data, realia-related motifs and biographical information about the depicted persons were recorded. Texts and motifs were indexed according to various criteria. This extensive documentation enables differentiated research options based on the history of craftsmanship and technology, the subject and social history as well as on personal aspects.

Transcription

When transcribing, the text was copied exactly to the letter. No changes or adjustments to modern spellings were made during the recording, only "uu" and "uv" were changed to "w" so as not to interrupt the flow of reading. The not always logical use of upper and lower case letters was retained, as was the punctuation. Abbreviations were translated, but marked with round brackets. Insertions and changes in the text are in angle brackets; missing passages or additions by the author are in square brackets and come with explanations by the author.

Data migration

The database, created in 2009 with funding from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, was moved to the Virtual Historical Collection of the Nuremberg City Library in 2024. The links to images in the old database will no longer supported.