The stenographic session reports of the proceedings of the North German Confederation, the Zollparlament (Parliament of the German Customs Union) and the Reichstag are available in print continuously from 1867 to 1942, consisting of 527 volumes. Representing an important source to modern German history, they were nevertheless difficult to access, due to irregular and scattered registers, and they were hardly available in their entirety in any library.
The German Research Foundation (DFG) has funded the digitisation of the stenographic session reports within the framework of the programme "Retrospektive Digitalisierung von Bibliotheksbeständen" (retrospective digitisation of library holdings) since 1997. In the second grant period, 148 volumes (122.580 Seiten pages) covering the period from 1918 to 1942 were digitised and made available on the Internet. For the first time, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek offers a complete edition of the parliamentary session reports (including all appendices).
In order to improve the analysis facilities of the electronic source material as compared to the printed source, full-text subject indices and indices of speakers were acquired. In addition, a database of Reichstag members was set up, which is based on the full-text data of the digitised biographic compendiums and offers further access options to the source material.