9th International Conference on Watermarks in Digital Collections at the Bavarian State Library

Veronika Giglberger and Bernhard Lutz (Bavarian State Library)

Thursday, October 29, 2026

From 15 to 17 October 2026, experts in the humanities, information technology, and materials science met at the Bavarian State Library for this year’s Bernstein Conference, the 9th International Conference on Watermarks in Digital Collections. One of the inspirations for this conference was the approaching completion of a project funded by the German Research Foundation dedicated to the cataloging and thermography of watermarks in the earliest music prints held by the Bavarian State Library, up to the middle of the 16th century. The event was therefore organized by the Bavarian State Library’s Music Department in cooperation with the Bernstein Project and the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Institute for Medieval Research). The conference focused on current developments and challenges in watermark research in the context of digital technologies, and the session topics covered a wide spectrum ranging from traditional humanities’ research and analysis to modern approaches to data management and connectivity. In addition to the thematic blocks Projects from Paper to Pixels and Old Challenges and New Solutions, the sessions focused on individual case studies and, in the concluding session, on a special topic of the conference: Connecting the Community. RISM, a widely-known and well-established authority in the field of watermark cataloging, was repeatedly addressed in various contexts throughout the numerous musicological presentations.

The participants of the conference. Image: Courtesy of © BSB | Sabine Gottstein

The supporting programme included a guided tour of the Bavarian State Library’s in-house scanning center with special emphasis on thermography, another tour of the exhibition Image, Script, Codes at the Deutsches Museum, as well as a full-day trip to the Gmund paper mill on Lake Tegernsee.

Image on top: Ox Head Watermark | Courtesy of © BSB

Category: Events