Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital History (Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft)

The Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital History (LBIDH, in the context of VHH simply LBI) embraces the development and application of digital technologies to transform the humanities on at least three different levels: methodically, organizationally, and content-related. Its main research focus lies on Visual History, Urban Studies, and Holocaust Studies.
The institute emerged from the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for History and Society (LBIGG) which was transformed and renamed in 2019. Established in 1977 at the University of Salzburg, transferred in 1979 to the Institute of Contemporary History at the University of Vienna, the institute has been located at the Hofburg, the former imperial palace in Vienna, as a non- university research institute since 2010. Lead by Erika Weinzierl 1977–2005 and by Siegfried Mattl 2005–2015, LBI has been headed by Ingo Zechner since 2015.
Non-theatrical and other ephemeral films and the development of digital platforms have played a key role in many of LBI’s thematically linked joint projects with the Austrian Film Museum (OFM), like “Film. City. Vienna: A Transdisciplinary Exploration of Vienna as a Cinematic City” (2009–2011), “Sponsored Films” (2010–2013), “Amateur Film Archeology: Excavations in Modern Visual Culture” (2011–2013), “Ephemeral Films: National Socialism in Austria” (2011–2016), “Exploring the interwar world: The travelogues of Colin Ross (1885–1945)” (2015–2017), “Doing Amateur Film. Social and aesthetic Practices in Austrian Amateur Films between the 1920s and the 1980s” (2016–2019), the Horizon 2020 project “I-Media-Cities” (2016–2019)”, and “Educational Film Practice in Austria (2019–2022).
In its previous joint projects with OFM, in particular in “Ephemeral Films: National Socialism in Austria” and “I-Media-Cities”, LBI conducted pioneering work and gathered broad experience in the development of digital film annotation, including the implementation of technical standards, the creation of semantics and ontologies (mainly controlled vocabularies), the design of web platforms addressing different user groups, and the execution of metadata enrichment on a large scale. LBI’s longstanding research focus on ephemeral films leads to an in-depth understanding of their potentials for SSH research and of the needs of researchers and other users who actually work with amateur ephemeral and “useful” films.
LBI is a research unit of the Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft (LBG). Founded in 1960, LBG is an independent Austrian research institution with a thematic focus on medicine, life sciences and the humanities, specifically targeting new research topics. Together with academic and implementing partners, LBG is currently running 19 institutes and employing 550 people who develop and test new forms of collaboration between science and non-scientific actors such as companies, the public sector and civil society.

Role in the Project

LBI is the coordinator of VHH. In this capacity and as leader of the respective work package, LBI ensures that the project progresses in line with the work plan, is responsible for administrative and financial management of VHH, and provides strategic guidance and support to the consortium in the implementation of their tasks.
LBI is deeply involved in all work packages and leader of tasks related to the identification and digitization of Holocaust-related filmic documents in the US, the development of controlled vocabularies and the validation of automated analysis.