If someone is doing research in the Five Continents Museum and needs a book from the Central Institute for Art History – what to do? The new library network “MAIA” offers a solution: In one internet portal, it collects the holdings of five Munich institutes and libraries from the fields of Egyptology, archaeology, ethnology and art history.
Here, the more than one million books can not only be searched, but also ordered to the individual locations from Tuesday, May 2 and delivered promptly. The Institute for Egyptology and Coptology as well as the Institute for Classical Archeology at the LMU Munich, the Five Continents Museum, the Central Institute for Art History and the Bavarian National Museum are involved. The project also cooperates with the Bavarian State Library.
Since the individual holdings are compiled according to different focal points, they complement each other thematically. MAIA is therefore right in line with the trend in science, in interdisciplinary work: “Up to now, the limits of time, place and subject have also been the limits of the availability of literature. We want to create an innovative research environment beyond these limits,” says Ulrich Pfisterer from the Central Institute for Art History .
A case study: How are human and non-human cultures of camouflage related? In her lecture at the opening event of MAIA, Carolin von Eck showed that such questions require the cooperation of different disciplines. The professor at the University of Cambridge – of course – used the new portal for her research. Last but not least, MAIA pursues an inclusive approach in that the barrier-free ordering service makes research work easier for particularly disabled people. In the future, as many libraries as possible should join the network and expand the offering.
MAIA portal, www.maiaresearch.org