Premises and laboratory Haus, Lesesaal und Labor
The Institute occupies Am Alten Archiv 7, a building that was formerly an annexe of the old archive. It was rented in two floors when the Institute was revived in 1951, bought with a grant from the Land in 1974, when the laboratory building was put up in the courtyard, and given a converted attic store in 1996. Nothing has been built since. The whole site is about 620 square metres: 210 for stores and the strongroom, 280 for reading and offices, 130 for laboratory and repair. The arrangement follows the work — the stores sit in the middle of the building, the offices around them, and visitors stay on the ground floor.
1. Rooms
| Room | Use | Area | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Main 0.03–0.05 | Documentation room and darkroom | 46 m² | Division V. Capture, scanning and checking of microfilm. The basement holds 16 to 18 °C all year with little variation, which is why the technical equipment is kept there. |
| Main 0.04 | Archive of the Institute's own files | 18 m² | Correspondence, project reports, personnel records, negative books. Consultation requires a written slip. |
| Main 1.01–1.02 | Director's room and academic office | 34 m² | Reception of visitors, enquiries, registration. Visitors are ordinarily dealt with here. |
| Main 1.04–1.08 | Divisions I and II | 72 m² | Numismatics and diplomatics; room 1.06 also serves for accessioning coins and making rubbings. |
| Main 1.10 | Reference library | 58 m² | Open shelves, about 14,600 volumes, fourteen drawers of cards. See Reference library. |
| Main 2.02–2.07 | Divisions III and IV | 86 m² | Editing and the study of writing; room 2.06 has the hand-comparison table and the magnifying equipment. |
| Main, attic | Store for cards and publications | 54 m² | Duplicate cards, stock of the series, exchanged journals. The roof covering was renewed in 2019. |
| Lab. EG-1–2 | Laboratory and balance room | 44 m² | Division VI. A double door separates the balance room from the instrument room against draughts and vibration. See below. |
| Lab. EG-3 | Repair workshop | 26 m² | Protective covers, repairs, lining; extractor bench and de-ionised water supply. |
| Lab. EG-4 | Photographic room | 22 m² | Copy stand, standard lighting, grey and colour cards. All plates in the Institute's publications are made here. |
| Lab. UG | Strongroom | 38 m² | Seal impressions, microfilm, image negatives. Held at 17 °C and 50 % relative humidity. No unauthorised entry. |
| Main 1.11 | Reading room | 32 m² | Eight places, two of them with sloping desks for charters; pencil only. See Use of the collections. |
2. The reading room, and what it is like to work in
The reading room is on the ground floor next to the library, with a glazed door between the two so that a reader can move between the reference shelves and the card catalogues without leaving the room. There are eight places: six ordinary, two with sloping desks, and four flat consultation pads. The room is equipped with the following.
- Stationery. Pencils (2H, HB), acid-free paper, transparent rules, cotton gloves, pH test strips. Ink pens and erasers may not be brought in.
- Reference books. Regional historical dictionaries, Latin and Middle Low German dictionaries, tables for converting dates, and tables of coin and measure equivalents, kept on the shelf beside the desks.
- Equipment. Four adjustable reading lamps, hand magnifiers of 5× and 10×, and one portable ultraviolet lamp, which may be used only with the duty officer's agreement.
- Register. Readers sign the reading-room register on arrival, giving the purpose of the visit. The register is totalled by the academic office and provides the annual visitor figures.
A word of warning. The reading room has no air conditioning, and the western sun is strong in the afternoon. Charters and manuscripts are better consulted in the morning; if a long consultation is planned, tell us the day before and the lighting over that desk will be reduced in advance. In winter the heating is capped at 19 °C, for the sake of the paper and parchment, and will not be raised.
3. Laboratory equipment
Division VI has two rooms, the instrument room (EG-1) and the balance room (EG-2). The balance room is the inner room, sound-insulated with mineral wool, with its original terrazzo floor; the instruments stand on an anti-vibration table. The list below is checked twice a year, in March and September by the division; it was last checked on 1 September 2026.
| No. | Instrument | Acquired | State | Use and remarks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| L-01 | Precision balance, 0.01 mg | 2008 | in use | Weighing of coins; calibrated against standard weights before each session, the calibration being entered in the balance-room book. |
| L-02 | Portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometer | 2008, detector replaced 2017 | in use | Qualitative element analysis of coins and ink; 60 to 120 seconds per measurement. Results are semi-quantitative only and every report must say so. |
| L-03 | Stereomicroscope, 7× to 45× | 2008 | in use | Die wear, die faults, paper fibre; fitted with an eyepiece graticule. |
| L-04 | Ultraviolet examination lamp, 365 nm | 2008 | in use | Size in paper, repairs, fluorescence of ink. Exposure of an original is limited to three minutes at a time. |
| L-05 | Fibre projector | 1994 | out of action | Fibre composition of paper. The lamp ballast failed in 2019; the part must be made to order by the maker and had not been obtained when this page was last revised. Fibre analysis is at present done by a partner institution. |
| L-06 | Copy stand and standard lighting | 2008, lamps 2018 | in use | Plates for charters and coins; grey and colour cards; 5000 K ± 100 K. |
| L-07 | Flatbed scanner, A3, 600 and 1200 dpi | 2010 | in use | Cards and single sheets; 1200 dpi where there is a seal or a fold. |
| L-08 | Microfilm readers, two | 1996 and 2001 | in use, one spare | Consultation and checking of microfilm. The 2001 machine has a printer attachment; its prints are on thermal paper and must be copied if they are to last. |
| L-09 | Portable digital microscope | 2016 | in use | Examination on site of objects that cannot be moved; loan must be entered in the book. |
| L-10 | Temperature and humidity recorders, three | 2013 | in use | One each in the strongroom, the attic store and the library; read by hand on Mondays and Thursdays and checked against the instrument record. |
| L-11 | De-ionised water plant | 2012 | in use | For the repair workshop; cartridges changed half-yearly, the change being entered in the workshop book. |
| L-12 | Extractor bench | 2012 | in use | Dry cleaning of charters under negative pressure; gloves and mask are worn. |
4. The environment in the stores
The Institute's practice is to record and not to adjust retrospectively. Temperature and humidity are read twice a week by the duty officer; where a reading is outside the intended range it is entered as it stands, with the reason, and is not afterwards smoothed out. The record for the first three quarters of 2026 is summarised below. Readings are now taken twice a week rather than twice a day.
| Place | Intended | Lowest | Highest | Departures, and what was done |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Strongroom, laboratory basement | 17 °C / 50 % | 16.4 °C / 47 % | 18.1 °C / 53 % | Dehumidifier failed from 3 to 6 March and humidity rose to 53 %; repaired on the 9th. Those four days are marked in red in the record. |
| Attic store, main building | none set | 12.1 °C / 43 % | 27.4 °C / 63 % | Heat from 20 to 27 July, 27.4 °C by day; vents opened and the store cooled at night. The duplicate cards were not affected. With fewer hands about, the vents were opened later in the day than in previous years. |
| Library, main building 1.10 | none set | 15.4 °C / 39 % | 25.8 °C / 58 % | Dry during the heating period; four water trays set out, and slip cases made for the older journals. No new slip cases have been made since 2024. |
A departure is counted against the intended figure or, where none is set, against the range of recent years. In 1998 the Institute considered installing air conditioning throughout. The building is old and the cost of converting it, and of running the plant, were both high; the holdings are largely paper cards and microfilm; and zonal control was judged sufficient. The assessment is in the archive as Akt 22/7.
5. Work done for outside institutions
Besides the Institute's own work, Division VI accepts testing and advice from outside, the fees going to the maintenance of the instruments and the purchase of consumables. The Institute does not compete with commercial laboratories and does not undertake commercial authentication. The commonest requests and the answers they receive are these.
| Request | Undertaken? | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
| Semi-quantitative analysis of coin alloys | Yes, by appointment | Up to twenty coins at a time; a test record is issued. No opinion on market value is given. |
| Preliminary examination of ink and paper | Yes, by appointment | Confined to the Institute's own holdings or to material brought in with its agreement. Observations are for research reference and are not evidence of authenticity. |
| Arrangement and registration of museum coin collections | Yes | Under the agreement of 1985 with museums in the Land; the volume of work is settled batch by batch. |
| Authentication and valuation for private owners | No | The Institute does not authenticate for commercial purposes and issues no certificate that could be used in a sale. Such enquiries are referred to public institutions. |
| Actual conservation treatment | Generally no | The repair workshop confines itself to the Institute's own holdings and to those of partner institutions. Advice on materials and methods is given. |
6. Access for visitors
On the ground floor of the main building the reading room, the library and the academic office can all be reached by the ramp at the courtyard gate, and internal doorways are 90 cm wide. There is no lift to the first floor, where the division offices are; the staircase is the original of 1951, twenty-one steps of 17 cm. The ground floor of the laboratory building is reached over level paving, but the narrowest point in the instrument room is 78 cm. Anyone who would like help should say so when making an appointment; the Institute can arrange for material to be consulted and copied on the ground floor on their behalf. Directions are given under Address and directions.
Compiled by Division VI and the academic office. Changes of room or of equipment should be reflected here within a month of their being made.
Page WI-INST-03 · compiled by T. Bruns and M. Tiedemann · read by the director's office · last modified 18 September 2026