AnimalBase

AnimalBase is a project brought to life in 2004 and is maintained by the University of Göttingen, Germany. The goal of the AnimalBase project is to digitize early zoological literature, provide copyright-free open access to zoological works, and provide manually verified lists of names of zoological genera and species as a free resource for the public. AnimalBase contributed to opening up the classical taxonomic literature, which is considered as useful because access to early literature (especially for the late 18th century) can be difficult for researchers who need the old sources for their taxonomic research.

AnimalBase data are public domain. The public use of AnimalBase data is not restricted or conditioned. AnimalBase covers all zoological disciplines. In the field of biodiversity informatics AnimalBase is unique in providing links between the names of generic and specific taxa and their digitized original descriptions, with a special focus on literature and names published prior to 1800.

The project was initiated in 2003 with funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG). The database and its web interface began development in 2004 and was launched online in 2005. The web interface was designed to be accessible to older generations of computers and web browsers. Between 2003 and 2005 approximately 400 zoological publications from the 1550s to 1770 were digitized while 10,000 linked zoological names were incorporated into the database. A second effort (2008–2011) has included additional digitized literature giving access to several ten thousand more zoological names that were extracted from the original sources and linked with their digitized original descriptions.

Early zoological publications are digitized under the highest quality standards by the Center for Retrospective Digitization in Göttingen (Göttinger Digitalisierungszentrum, GDZ) of the Göttingen State and University Library (Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen, SUB), which is one of Germany's largest libraries, including over 4.5 million volumes. If available, AnimalBase also provides links to the digitized public domain content of other providers, such as the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) or Gallica.

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