The research on the tablatures and the editing of this material have revealed an urgent need to (i) re-systematise and re-index the material, and (ii) manage these tasks within a newly designed database. This database was specifically created to support the processing of material created before 1600 and is intended to be used in an interdisciplinary and broadly accessible manner – not only for E-LAUTE but also for several other ongoing or planned long-term projects. Active collaboration with scholars in German Studies within the E-LAUTE project – particularly in areas such as teaching texts and lyrics for intabulations, issues of vocal and textual concordance, paratexts, and textual readability – as well as existing gaps in the systematisation and processing of 16th-century song texts (also evident within German Studies), have prompted the creation of this new database.

The E-LAUTEdb serves both as a repository and as a tool for exporting material to the E-LAUTE ÖNB platform. This means that the database is not visible to external users. Furthermore, not all materials that have already been entered and processed in the database are currently accessible via the platform. However, the database operates in the background. The guidelines, which we continuously update and expand, are published on the platform, see E-LAUTEdb: Database Conventions

The search functionality of the database in the E-LAUTE ÖNB Platform is currently being developed. It will allow users to search across all relevant parameters, including titles, text incipits, genres or types, personal names and their functions, as well as textual and musical sources.