Trausch’s Library

• Home >
• Trausch’s Library

Digital Reconstruction of an Extensive Library by the Department of Engineering

As part of the Gilbert Trausch project, carried out by the Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH) and the Institut d’Histoire (IHist) of the University of Luxembourg, the Geodesy and Geospatial Engineering team at the Department of Engineering (DoE) has been closely collaborating with the C2DH since late 2019 in order to create a 3D model of the house and bookshelves of the late Professor Gilbert Trausch. 

Trausch, a renowned Luxembourg historian who passed away in 2018, had built, over almost half a century, an important private scientific library containing over 20,000 books and publications. The idea behind the project was to digitally recreate the library and allow the public easy and continuous access to these works. Another objective behind the initiative was to conduct a scientific study of the intellectual and material practices of Gilbert Trausch, as a historian of the 20th century. 

To build the virtual library with its 33 bookshelves, Felix Norman Teferle, professor at the DoE, and his team used state-of-the-art 3D building modelling approaches: a broad spectrum of modern geospatial technologies including classical surveying, Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), digital close-range photogrammetry and terrestrial laser scanning.

To take a sample virtual tour please click here.