As part of the State of Saxony's digitisation programme, the IfL had more than 400 books from its historical holdings digitised in 2017/2018. Almost all of the works date back to the 19th century. These are mainly books about exploratory voyages and those from the age of colonialism. Three of the surviving provenances deserve special mention:

• The founder of the Museum für Länderkunde, Alphons Stübel (1835-1904), acquired numerous books and pamphlets on his travels, especially during his research stay of several years in South America 1868-1877.
• The Leipzig Geographical Society, founded in 1861, maintained a worldwide exchange of literature with other geographical societies and institutes. Its library was merged with the library of the Museum für Länderkunde after 1945.
• A few years ago, the scholars' library of the historian of science and Humboldt expert Hanno Beck (1923-2018) was taken over, which also contains numerous books from the 19th century.

The digital copies of the books from the Geographical Central Library are presented by the Saxon State and University Library in Dresden and are freely available on the portal Sachsen.digital.

open collection