Future developments

Despite its achievements, the Sammlung Deutscher Drucke still has a long way to go, since so far no one has been able to determine precisely how many books have been published in Germany since the invention of printing and how many printed works the libraries participating in the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Sammlung Deutscher Drucke will have to acquire in the future.

The initial funding provided by the Volkswagen Foundation and the continuing financial support provided through the funding bodies of the libraries enable the participating libraries to come ever nearer to their goal: as exhaustive a collection as possible of all printed works published in German-speaking countries and in areas touched by German culture, simultaneously constituting a significant step forward in the preservation of our cultural heritage.