Department of Historical Bibliography
- Director: PhDr. Anežka Baďurová
- E-mail: badurova@knav.cz
- Tel.: 221 403 251
The main tasks of the department are heuristics and bibliographic processing of sources for a comprehensive survey of Bohemian prints in foreign languages produced by the Czech, Moravian and foreign printing houses in the 16th-18th century. The data on approximately 47,000 Bohemian editions have been collected to date, based on a search of domestic and foreign holdings of historical books as well as expert literature. Of this total, about 25,000 were described bibliographically in detail using the de visu method; the balance is covered only by brief notes taken from catalogues or literature.
Database „Bibliography of Bohemian Prints in Foreign Languages from the Period of 1501–1800“ is being compiled from existing catalogues and newly described prints. The results of this bibliographic research of Bohemian items in foreign languages are used by the department members to generate subject-oriented bibliographies and studies from the history of Czech book printing and Czech libraries. They also serve as a source of relevant information for the scientific community. Descriptions of the production of domestic printing houses in the 16th and 17th centuries in foreign languages are now available, in a scanned form, on a CD-ROM that may be purchased at the Academy of Sciences Library (ASL). Other bibliographic materials are also being prepared for publication. CD-ROM Bibliography of the Works of J. A. Comenius Printed Before 1800 has been in distribution since December 2007. We anticipate that the databases and CD-ROMs mentioned here will be eventually posted on the ASL web pages in 2009 as well.
The history of books, book printing and libraries in the Czech lands up to the mid-nineteenth century is the focus of Books and History - a magazine that has been published (in Czech with foreign abstracts) by the department since 1994. The same subject matter may be found in “Database of Expert Literature on Historical Bibliography”, which is being prepared by the department in parallel with the bibliographic research of Bohemian prints.
The Department of Historical Bibliography administers the oldest ASL historical library holdings (approximately 25,000 volumes of manuscripts, early printed books and old prints), the most valuable of them being a hand-written Latin bible referred to as Martinická, probably from the 1430s, with a unique pictorial depiction of the burning of Master John Huss at the stake.
Publications of the ASL Department of Historical Bibliography
