The Microform and Digital Collections Division collects and makes available microform and digital copies of the most valuable objects in the Ossolineum collections: manuscripts, early printed books and new books, periodicals, graphic and numismatic objects. The microform collections are supplemented by microfilms of collections of objects from other libraries in Poland and abroad. For example, we have copies of some documents and letters concerning Count Józef Maksymilian Ossoliński, the originals of which are kept in the Austrian National Library and the Austrian State Archives in Vienna. The Division also holds microfiches of the Polish Biographical Archive, published in Munich, with biographies of well-known and lesser-known historical personalities from the 18th to the mid-20th centuries.
The most important part of the collection are digital copies of the pre-war collections of the Ossolineum, currently held at the Vasyl Stefanyk National Scientific Library of Ukraine in Lviv - these are mainly copies of manuscripts and the Archives of the Ossolineum and the Archives of the Ossolineum Publishing House, as well as periodicals. Early printed books and manuscripts from the Wroclaw collections are also being gradually digitised.
The digitised materials are presented both on site and online. Based on the scans of manuscripts and periodicals from Lwów, digital publications are prepared and published in the local Digital Resources Database and the Lower Silesia Digital Library.
The origins of the Division date back to the 1950s and are linked to the campaign to preserve the most valuable resources by microfilming them. An in-house reprographics workshop was then set up at the Ossolineum. This also necessitated the creation of a unit to collect, catalogue and store the microfilmed material collected. In the early years of the reprographic workshop, only negative copies were made, as a back-up in case the originals were destroyed. Later, positive microfilms and diazo copies were also collected and made available to readers and sent to other libraries for inter-library loan.
The Microform Division has been involved in digitisation since 2003. Its staff are now responsible for collecting, cataloguing and making digital copies available online. Since 2004, the Ossolineum's digital collection has been growing steadily thanks to its participation in various projects and ministerial grants. In the first phase of the digitisation work, the priority was to make copies of those Ossolineum collections that remained in Lwów (Lviv): manuscripts, periodicals, the archives of the National Ossolinski Institute and the Ossolineum Publishing House. Over time, the digitisation projects were extended to the Wroclaw collections - early printed books, manuscripts and rare books from the 19th and 20th centuries.
