The MapInfo program is used for computer-aided mapping and the collection of factual data. The digitized map templates are georeferenced using the Gauss-Krüger coordinate system. For presentation on the Internet, the geodata is converted to the new official reference system UTM (= Universal Transverse Mercator) Zone 32.

The starting point for the creation of the digital house book was the map "Mainz around 1620" published by Ludwig Falck in the fifth volume of "Geschichte der Stadt Mainz" (History of the City of Mainz) in 1972, which provides a list of the locations and names of the houses.

The Falck plan was based on an original plan from around 1625/26, the so-called Sweden Plan (Mainz City Archives, BPSP / 55 D; "Sweden Plan" because it was confiscated by the Swedes during the Thirty Years' War). This is the oldest city plan of Mainz. Since the Sweden Plan shows the state of the city of Mainz before the destruction of the Thirty Years' War and thus – at least as far as the individual building blocks are concerned – still largely reflects the late medieval substance, it is ideally suited for a retroactive projection. In order to correct the inaccurate scale ratios of the Sweden Plan, Ludwig Falck adapted his redrawing to the oldest true-to-scale city plan of Mainz from 1871 (Sta Mainz, BPSP / 489 D), which is based on cadastral surveys and contains all parcels and floor plans.

This city map of Mainz from around 1620, created by Ludwig Falck in an immense amount of detailed work, was scanned for the "Digital House Book" and transferred to MapInfo as a TIFF raster image, then georeferenced, i.e., provided with state coordinates. Based on this template, new maps were generated in the form of individual layers using computer software.

These so-called layers group together objects with the same data structure (for example, layers for building outlines, building areas, and other topographical lines such as roads, squares, and bodies of water, as well as for point objects). In addition to the house names, further factual and image data was then added to the objects in the individual layers.

Using the georeferenced and digitized Falck map as a backdrop, the houses identified for the mid-15th century were created and designed as individual graphic, area-shaped objects in various MapInfo files, so that the map of Mainz around 1620 can be superimposed on the map of Mainz around 1450 like a transparency.

Due to a lack of archaeological and architectural findings, the accuracy that characterizes the 1620 city map in terms of the extent of the houses, including rear buildings, courtyards, and gardens, cannot be achieved for the 15th century. This means that the house areas marked for the 15th century primarily indicate the location and in most cases cannot provide reliable information about the floor plans of the buildings. Alternatively, the location of the houses could have been marked with symbols.

For the sake of clarity, and on the assumption that a significant proportion of late medieval buildings still existed in 1620, the entire plot was marked on the map as it appears on the Sweden Plan.

In addition to the literature (see bibliography), the 1450 house register was compiled primarily on the basis of the extensive collection of documents from the Mainz city court on house purchases and sales, grants and pledges of house ownership, and other real estate transactions stored in the city archives. More than 400 houses are recorded with the relevant information. Depending on the intended use and ownership of the houses, the areas are colored differently (as in the 1620 house register).

First presented in the exhibition "Gutenberg – aventur und kunst. Vom Geheimunternehmen zur ersten Medienrevolution" (Gutenberg – adventure and art. From secret enterprise to the first media revolution) in 2000. Online since 2003, revised and supplemented in 2009, updated in 2018.

The plan for 1620, which had already been created for the 1450 house register, was further refined and supplemented. As in 1450, the areas were colored according to socio-topographical criteria. To date, information on more than 1,000 houses and their inhabitants has been entered.

In addition to the documents of the city court (including the city court records kept in the city archive in inventory 5), the city survey of 1594 (Sta Mainz, 6/2; edited by Heinrich Schrohe, Die Mainzer Stadtaufnahmen des 16. bis 18. Jahrhunderts. Part I [Beiträge zur Geschichte der Stadt Mainz 6], Mainz 1930) and the tax list of 1614 (Sta Mainz, 6/55) were also evaluated. Where available, individual floor plans were also taken into account when redrawing the areas (e.g., from Ernst Stephan, Das Bürgerhaus in Mainz, Tübingen 1974).

The reconstruction of the floor plan of the so-called Schweikhardtsburg with the Benedictine monastery of St. Jakob was particularly complex, for which additional plans from 1620 (Sta Mainz, BPSP / 2357a), 1630 (Staatsarchiv Würzburg, MRA K 692/1435) and from 1794 (illustrated in G.J. Wilhelm Wagner / Friedrich Schneider, Die vormaligen geistlichen Stifte im Großherzogtum Hessen, Darmstadt 1878, plate V) were also taken into account. In addition, two individual layers were created for the period after the Thirty Years' War, one for the citadel, the successor building to Schweikhardtsburg Castle (based on the Spalla plan mentioned below), and one for the dwellings of the Mainz Jews before the establishment of the ghetto in 1662/71 (based on the city survey of 1657, edited by Schrohe, Stadtaufnahmen, Part II [Beiträge 7], Mainz 1930).

The fortifications and the city's surroundings after 1648 are documented in another separate layer, which reproduces a plan by the Italian engineer Giovanni Giuseppe Spalla from 1676 (in a copy from 1827 in Sta Mainz, BPSP / 123 D).

Online since 2012.

The 1871 cadastral map (Sta Mainz, BPSP / 489 D) already used by Ludwig Falck was taken as the basis for the 1871 house register. When georeferencing the digitized map, it became apparent that the two parts of the map had not been glued together precisely and that there were gaps at the interfaces.

For this reason, additional contemporary plans were used to represent the northern part of the city (Sta Mainz, BPSM / 195 D and BPSP / 837 D). The additions to the various railway projects dating up to 1876 were not included from the 1871 cadastral plan.

In contrast to the two previous house registers, the owners and residents of the buildings were not included for the time being, as they can be easily found in the 1870 address book of the city of Mainz, which is available at www.dilibri.de.

A full-text search (under "Objects") is possible for public and military buildings. The 1871 house register was supplemented by a depiction of the Mainz fortress, which is completely omitted from the official cadastral city map. For this purpose, a folder (StA Mainz, BPSM / 27a) created during the war in 1866 with 25 individual sheets on the individual sections of the fortress was georeferenced and digitized and compared with an overview plan of the Mainz fortress created in 1873, which also included the area on the right bank of the Rhine (StA Mainz, BPSP / 495 C) created in 1873, which also includes the area on the right bank of the Rhine, in order to eliminate any inaccuracies, deviations, and contradictions that were found.

Online since December 2013.

A georeferenced digitized version of a city map from 1946 (StA Mainz, BPSP / 595 D) provides information about the destruction at the end of World War II.

Available online since June 2016.