The archive of the University of Bayreuth turns 10 years old

Since 1 March 2013, the University of Bayreuth has had its own archive and has thus been documenting its own history and administrative actions in a self-determined manner for ten years. This ensures that the university files, which are neatly filed by the registry, do not have to be processed by the responsible state archive in Bamberg, but remain on the premises in close consultation.

The right place for this was found in the former calibration office in Leuschnerstraße, where, under Karsten Kühnel as the first full-time head of the archives, the premises were converted into a fully functional workspace with offices, reading room and storage (including mobile shelving) after professional long-term measurements of humidity and temperature. Soon the first holdings arrived, which consisted of records of the UBT founding president, Dr. Klaus Dieter Wolff, more extensive accessions from the registry of the central university administration, photographs from the Iwalewahaus and the archive of the student newspaper 'Der Tip'. Since then, under the current university archivist Dr. Lisa Witowski, the archive records have grown steadily and include not only the electronic data of all students since the beginning of the university, but also the old holdings of the UBT predecessor institutions, i.e. the records of the former Bayreuth Teacher Training College (1895 to 1958), the Coburg Teacher Training College (1806 to 1958) and the records of the College of Education (1958 to 1975). "Although the University of Bayreuth only started teaching in 1975, its archive draws on holdings dating back to the mid-19th century," Witowski explains.

But caring for centuries-old written material is only part of the university archive's daily work. Modern administration needs digital solutions for its archival records as well as powerful archive information systems. Bayreuth is in an exemplary position here and, in cooperation with the other Bavarian universities and in consultation at the level of the Chancellor's Circle, has set up a "digital archive" since 2023, so that the responsibility for clean storage can be fulfilled without media discontinuity. Networking with other cultural institutions in and around Bayreuth, but also within the university itself, are basic prerequisites for an archive in order to secure relevant documents in a timely manner and with integrity on the one hand, but on the other hand to be able to make them accessible to the interested public.

In 2015, the University Archive was co-responsible for the creation of the anniversary publication, and to date, users of all ages and with all kinds of archival experience have been served: from the 98-year-old former student to Bayreuth school classes who wrote their seminar papers based on the university's holdings. There is still a lot to do – because the next university anniversary is already coming up in 2025.

Dr Lisa Witowski has been the full-time head of the archives at the University of Bayreuth since 2017. Born in Thuringia, she previously worked as a research assistant at the State Archives in Bamberg and the Diocesan Museum in Vienna, among others. She wrote her doctoral thesis on the topic of medieval church history at the Otto Friedrich University of Bamberg and completed her archival training at the Potsdam University of Applied Sciences.