colibri stands for Corpus Libri et Liberi and refers to a project funded by the German Research Foundation in 2021 for the digitization of children’s and young adult literature. The Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, the University Library of the Technische Universität Braunschweig, the Bielefeld University Library and the Stiftung Internationale Jugendbibliothek München are participating with a selection of their holdings. The portal will make 15,000 (!) German-language works of children’s and youth literature from the period between 1801 and 1914 freely accessible in a digital format; around 12,000 works are currently available, with new ones being added almost daily. The project should be completed by May of this year. Picture books and text works, fictional literature and non-fiction, individual works and multi-volume editions – everything can be found via the clearly laid out portal using freely selectable search terms. There is also a browse function with randomly selected works.
All in all, the people involved have done an excellent job – they deserve great credit for implementing a highly demanding project for which there are no role models and which therefore probably required a great deal of pioneering work. We have taken a close look at colibri – our appraisal is given here.
Our tip for getting started: works by Lothar Meggendorfer – there are quite a lot of them.