Kronika
Aktualnie dostępne tomy Bibliografii Polskiej dystrybuuje: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego.
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Wszystkie przedsięwzięcia naukowe opisane w naszej Kronice są efektem pracy całego zespołu bibliografów zatrudnionych w Centrum, bez której nie byłyby one możliwe.
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Zarządzeniem nr 56 z dnia 12 października 2007 roku JM Rektor Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego na wniosek prof. Wacława Waleckiego powolał w miejsce Zakładu Bibliografii Polskiej im. Karola Estreichera - Centrum Badawcze "Bibliografii Polskiej" Estreicherów. Cieszymy się z tego ważnego awansu naukowego naszej placówki.
27 maja 2025
WAŻNA INFORMACJA - CZĘŚĆ I i II
IMPORTANT INFORMATION - PART I AND II
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Owocem sympozjum opisanego w naszej Kronice pod datą
29.-30. czerwca 2023 z oficjalnym tytułem:
1ST. CERL Conference "Retrospective Bibilographies and European
Print Cultures to 1830 – Callenges and Parspectives in the Digital Age"
staje się obecnie księga:
Never Finish(ed).The Vitality and Dynamics of Retrospective 'National' Bibliographies for European Print Cultures to the Middle of the Nineteenth Century, Edited by O. Tkachuk, M. Lefferts, C. Fabian,
Harrassovitz Verlag, Wiesbaden (2025),
zawierająca kopiowany poniżej tekst (p. 83-89).
Inicjatorem konferencji i publikacji było europejskie CERL (Consortium of European Research Libraries), wydawcą zaś materiałów prestiżowa niemiecka oficyna Harrassovitz.
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Trud powstawania "książkowego" Estreicherowskiego, fundamentu humanistyki polskiej, trwał do tej pory łącznie nieco ponad 150 lat. Zespołowi Centrum Badawczego Bibliografii Polskiej Estreicherów w Uniwersytecie Jagiellońskich pod kierownictwem prof. Waleckiego przypadł zaszczyt kontynuowania Bibliografii XIX wieku (opublikowaliśmy następnych sześć tomów) oraz zakończenia sześcioma nowymi woluminami serii staropolskiej. Podjęliśmy także inicjatywę prezentacji całości dzieła na wymienionym wyżej profesjonalnym europejskim forum, wraz ze stworzoną przez nas Elektroniczną Bazą Bibliografii Estreichera (EBBE).
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Zamknięcie serii staropolskiej BP i powstanie EBBE traktujemy jako pamiątkę dwóch jubileuszów zawodowych
(50-lecia doktoratu prof. Wacława Waleckiego i 40-lecia pracy naukowej mgra Stanisława Siess-Krzyszkowskiego).
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Wacław Walecki
Jagiellonian University, Research Centre of the Estreichers’
Polish Bibliography
Stanisław Siess-Krzyszkowski
Jagiellonian University, Research Centre of the Estreichers’
Polish Bibliography
ON THE ESTREICHERS’ BIBLIOGRAPHY AS A RESEARCH TOOL
AND AS A HISTORIC OBJECT
ABSTRACT
This article has two objectives: to acquaint European researchers not only with the foundation of Polish literary culture formed by the Estreichers’ Bibliography, but also with what has been achieved during its continuation over the last two decades at the Research Centre of the Estreichers’ Polish Bibliography at the Jagiellonian University, Kraków (JU). The value of the Estreichers’ Bibliography lies not only in presenting, for one and a half centuries, an interrupted picture of Polish literature and its development from the beginning of printing until the late 19th century, but also in demonstrating advanced research methods of bibliography, employed since its early volumes and continued to date.
GENERAL INFORMATION
The Estreichers’ Bibliography has been compiled for over 160 years and continually published for 154 years (the first issue of the first volume appeared in 1870). It consists of three main catalogues: the catalogue organised by authors and headwords1 of Old Polish literature from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century (also called Part III), then the nineteenth-century alphabetical catalogue by authors and headwords (Part I and its new, second edition), and the chronological catalogue (Part II, from the beginning of printing to 1889). Today, the Old Polish alphabetical catalogue comprises 26 volumes (in 28 issues)2, the nineteenth-century series (as a new extended edition) comprises 23 volumes3 (its first edition comprised 11 volumes4), while the chronological catalogue comprises 4 volumes5 and is no longer continued or reissued.
These dozens of volumes (a total of exactly 66 books to date) were compiled, as mentioned above, mostly single-handedly by three successive generations of the Estreichers, professors at the Jagiellonian University (here: JU) and the Kraków Academy of Arts and Sciences (later Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences – PAU): Karol Estreicher Senior, his son Stanisław Estreicher and his grandson Karol Estreicher Junior. By the will of Karol Junior, a research unit was established at the PAU in 1954 to pursue this monumental life’s work of all Estreichers; that institute is today affiliated with the JU, where we continue, among other things, with editing the 19th century Bibliography. The recently published volumes are monographs containing the bibliography of the works of Józef Ignacy Kraszewski, author of over 230 novels (including 90 historical ones), together with their numerous re-editions in an impressive number of translations into many languages (245 pages of bibliographic descriptions in a two-column layout). Another pioneering volume in this series, dedicated to the headword Kreisschreiben, contains a highly recommendable set of bibliographic descriptions of official prints of the Austrian monarchy published for Galicia, and is an inexhaustible source for historical research in this field. We also succeeded in publishing six more volumes of the Old Polish Bibliography, ending with a volume that reveals previously unused, or only alluded to, information on several editions that was gathered in Estreichers’ private archive.
Today, we regard the work on the core of the Old Polish bibliography in its printed version as completed, but we are of course still considering the possibility of compiling another volume in this series in the future, to include printed works unknown to the Estreichers and described according to the same principles. The new edition of the 19th century catalogue, on the other hand, must run in its own rhythm. The forthcoming headword will be Kreisblatt, parallel to Kreisschreiben.
Incidentally, it is worth noting that during the last 150 years, neither the disappearance of the Polish state from the map of Europe for the entire 19th century nor the revolutions of the early 20th century, nor the First and Second World Wars nor the Cold War, nor the enslavement of the Polish nation after 1945 nor the current war in Ukraine have prevented the Estreichers’ Bibliography from being published. The Bibliography and its creators have had mixed and often tragic fortunes over those years. During the Second World War, in order to keep the Estreichers’ archives safe, they were hidden from the German occupiers and secretly transported from place to place at night, e.g. on a child’s sledge in February 19406. And the ashes of Stanisław Estreicher, whose body was burned in a concentration camp crematorium in late December 1939, were sent to his widow by post in a cardboard shoebox.
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This article is mainly devoted to the Old Polish series of the Estreichers’ Bibliography that is both a classic national retrospective bibliography, a unique cultural asset on a European scale, and an up-to-date, practical research tool – which will be the focus of the second part of this article.
We have applied the content-related and editorial guidelines adopted over a hundred years ago until today, thus building one whole, coherent with the initial volumes. These guidelines include above all: the principle of recording texts taken from old prints using a method similar to transliteration rather than to a transcription system, and the classification of works according to the criteria of Estreicher’s polonicum. In general, the Bibliography includes works by Polish authors and works concerning Poland, or numerous prints produced in the historical territory of the Republic and beyond, which meet the above criteria, regardless of the language of the text. Thus, this series covers all printed matter within that scope from the beginning of printing until the end of the 18th century, i.e. (sic!) to 1799 (note that Estreicher included 1800 in the 19th century). Since the period currently accepted in Europe for qualifying books as old prints has been extended to 1830, and even to the middle of the 19th century, the corpus of the Old Polish bibliography can now include the material covering the first thirty years from the new 19th century series, incomplete as yet, as a retrospective old print bibliography.
In recent years, the entire material from the Old Polish bibliography and the volumes of the 19th century Bibliography published to date has been successfully digitized and digitalized to form a database available on the Internet, which contains over 400,000 entries (names and subject headwords), using the method of filling the database with bibliographic descriptions from individual book volumes, divided into pre-defined fields, thereby creating autonomous records.
ELECTRONIC DATABASE OF THE ESTREICHERS’ BIBLIOGRAPHY (EBBE)7
A GENERAL STRUCTURE DESCRIPTION INTENDED FOR USERS
The website has a welcome page indicating where the EBBE is being created with a link to information about the Research Centre of the Estreichers’ Polish Bibliography at the Jagiellonian University.
General facts about the database and its functionalities are also given in English, German, French and Russian.
The entire EBBE material is divided into database sections accessible via menu tabs. The tabs are colour-coded, where green relates to Old Polish (the 15th to 18 th centuries); pink is for the 19th century; blue for additions of prints unknown to Estreicher and finally the red and grey tabs. These give access to the pages of the book version of ‘Estreicher’; these are used for certain operations performed in the database; the Old Polish and 19th century parts have ‘sub-tabs’: index of headwords and database.
EBBE offers various options of searching and working with the database: for example, variants of particularly important headwords (such as place of publication, e.g. Kraków-Krakau-Cracovie); publishing production in a freely selectable year – a multi-level selection; saving selected data to an individual user account.
Additional information in Polish, German, and Russian explains Estreicher’s proposition that Polish literature includes not only works written in Polish but also, for example, in Latin or other languages; next to it there is also an explanation of Estreicher’s famous mistake concerning the end of the 18th and and the beginning of the 19 th century.
We are currently working on two external tools to complement the database: a subject catalogue used to select bibliographic descriptions of works in a chosen field of knowledge, which cannot be doneby filtering titles of the works; the second external tool is a directory of all individuals appearing in the database, including those who are referred to indirectly and not mentioned e.g. by name.
The database already works with other databases which can complement and extend its resources, such as the electronic version of the Polish Biographical Dictionary, the Corpus Academicum Cracoviense that covers biographies and works of the professors of the Kraków Academy from its foundation to the Enlightenment, and there are plans to add other elements to the emerging bio-bibliographic network featuring historical Polish literature.
We have solved the difficult problem of making the database available to foreign users by providing essential information in world languages, as already mentioned; however, the system operates in Polish, because a user who wants to work with the database should have at least a basic knowledge of Polish to be capable of finding relevant information (we are now performing tests to find out whether commands entered in e.g. English can be useful enough in searching and understanding the contents of bibliographic records).
ELECTRONIC DATABASE OF THE ESTREICHERS’ BIBLIOGRAPHY
FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF ITS FOREIGN USERS
In addition to the standard method, i.e. using the author’s name or the original headwords, access to the Estreichers’ Bibliography for the purposes of comparative studies of Polish and European literature is obtained by selecting headwords relating to foreign publishers, the original spelling of the place of publication, etc. Here are some typical examples:
Place of publication:
Tigurum i. e. Zurich (18 hits),
Zurich (6 hits),
Franeker (36 hits),
London (187 hits),
Londinium (42 hits),
Londyn (7 hits).
Author’s nationality (for example: Szkot = Scot):
Aidius Jędrzej i. e. Aidy Andrew (6 prints),
Loeaechius Andreas i. e. Loech Andrew (56 prints),
Smollett Tobias (1 print);
in Supplements: Aidius Andreas (2 prints),
Loeaechius Andreas (1 print).
RESEARCH TOPIC: THEORETICALLY AND PRACTICALLY
The Estreichers’ Polish Bibliography, as the Polish National Retrospective Bibliography up to 1830, is a historical document and we must treat it in accordance with certain clear rules of conduct recommended for all source documents. Naturally, this statement refers mainly to the printed version of the Old Polish volumes, i.e. from volume XII to the first part of volume XXXIV, these being original Estreicher compilations, and from the second part of volume XXXIV to volume XXXVI with its three components: XXXVI/I, XXXVI/II and XXXVI/III, and the latest volume XXXVII. Thus, we have a total of 28 volumes (including one in its first and second editions), that give descriptions which were prepared in the past, and recently by the Centre, strictly following uniform scientific principles and the same guidelines as the original.
Consequently, we believe that the Estreicher Electronic Bibliography Database, faithfully representing the printed version as transferred to the age of digitisation (understood as the conversion from paper to a digital format) and digitalisation (understood as the electronic processing of the digital version), must rather than should be treated as the same historical source, the same document from the past as its printed prototype. And an additional advantage offered by the database is in the facilitated use of this source as an active, practical research tool, providing the functions typical of computer applications.
In our opinion, the database fulfils its two scientific tasks very well: it makes carefully and competently recorded historical material available for exploration and filtering for the purposes of scientific research, for example, when collecting bibliographic material for the intended research.
However, we must adhere to the principle of protecting the source material contained in the Estreichers’ Bibliography from what we, as researchers, consider to be unacceptable processing, such as the ‘alignment of records’ and “uniformization’ (that we recently observed), supposedly necessary to facilitate data sharing and achieved by ‘standardising’ the data and making it conform to ‘applicable IT standards’. Using the example of the data in the Estreichers’ Bibliography, it is clear that any change to the records falsifies the data, and this can cause irreversible distortion of the source-derived results and lead to nonsensical (with reference to the Bibliography material) conclusions. From a scientific perspective, this is a crime against the cultural heritage embedded in a historical source. For example, standardising the name of the place of publication in the Bibliography just to find where else in the world there is a place with a name roughly similar to the one we have ‘standardized’ is really of no use. A unified transcription of authors’ surnames, e.g. by introducing a single letter (specifically, where the use of ‘v’ or ‘w’ makes a difference) leads to irreversible mistakes, as several people can be merged into one individual; in turn, incompetent ‘alignment’ of location symbols of libraries with similar names would confuse different book collections (‘Jesuits’ and ‘Lviv Jesuits’ mean really not the same in the Estreichers’ Bibliography). This can reasonably be compared, mutatis mutandis, to an undertaking aimed at ‘polishing’ Shakespeare’s style to make his texts more easily comparable to works written by other authors.
We have a simple solution to this problem: the only type of database applicable in this case is a relational database like ours, which uses an alternation dictionary. In addition, it offers both an exact match and approximate match search. These simple functions are useful in numerous situations, mostly involving varying records of, for example, the names of printing houses (in Polish or Latin) and their locations (Kraków, Cracovia, Krakau, Cracovie mentioned above), the names of authors (Kochanowski, Cochanovius) and the names of people who are ‘protagonists’ of works. Certainly, the effective implementation of these options requires a bit of ingenuity, and the expertise of a researcher, rather than work aimed merely at obtaining a ready-made computer-information ‘product’. The best solution, of course, is a targeted consultation between a computer engineer and a bibliographer.
In our view, the most practical way of solving the ‘standardisation’ problem is offered bycreating only an access interface without tampering with the historical EBBE material.
POSTSCRIPT
Finally, we would like to make a statement:
We would be happy to see our database further developed through participation in an international project using the resources from our professional Estreichers’ Bibliography database. For example the data from our database can be compared with data from another national retrospective database or library resources with the aim of sharing bibliographic records, refining descriptions in commentaries (if necessary to identify copies, unknown authors or printing houses etc., as often a specific copy of a polonicum preserved in a foreign library provides a great deal of new information – and the other way round).
Generally available statistics clearly show that our Database is used in libraries in Poland and worldwide, and in offices of numerous researchers. The number of visits to our EBBE reaching not less than 30,000 and up to 60,000 monthly (depending on the season, holidays, etc.) has confirmed its popularity and value since more than ten years. We want our database to grow by making its services and resources available to a wider research community.
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1 Headword: an entry title for anonymous works (prints) – basing on a keyword, e.g. first noun in the title, in the nominative, e.g. Novus liber tristium stands under ‚Liber‘, Eigentliche, warhaftige und gründliche Beschreibung stands under ‚Beschreibung‘.
2 Estreicher, Karol: Bibliografia polska [Polish Bibliography]. Vol. XII: A–Be (Kraków, 1891); vol. XIII:Bi–Bz (Kraków, 1894); vol. XIV: Litera C (Kraków, 1896); vol. XV: Litera D (Kraków, 1897); vol. XVI: E–F (Kraków, 1898); vol. XVII: Litera G (Kraków, 1899); vol. XVIII: H–P (Kraków, 1901); vol. XIX: K–Kom (Kraków, 1903); vol. XX: Kon–Ky (Kraków, 1905); vol. XXI: Litera L (Kraków, 1906); vol. XXII: Litera M (Kraków, 1908); vol. XXIII: N–O (Kraków, 1910); vol. XXIV: P–Pom (Kraków, 1912); vol. XXV: Pon–Q (Kraków, 1913); vol. XXVI: Litera R (Kraków, 1915); vol. XXVII: S–Sh (Kraków, 1929); vol. XXVIII: Si–Soj (Kraków, 1930); vol. XXIX: Sok–St (Kraków, 1933); vol. XXX: Su–Sz (Kraków, 1934); vol. XXXI: Litera T (Kraków, 1936); vol. XXXII: U–Wik (Kraków, 1938); vol. XXXIII: Wil–Y (Kraków, 1939); vol. XXXIV: Z–Zazdrość, ed. by Karol Estreicher jun., Zofia Otczyk (Kraków, 1951/2000); vol. XXXV: Zb–Zil, ed. by Zofia Otczyk, St. Siess-Krzyszkowski (Kraków, 2007); vol. XXXVI/1: Zim–Zyz, ed. by St. Siess-Krzyszkowski (Kraków, 2013); vol. XXXVI/2: Dopełnienia i sprostowania do cz. III. A–G, ed. by St. Siess-Krzyszkowski (Kraków, 2014); vol. XXXVI/3: Dopełnienia i sprostowania do cz. III. H–Z, ed. by St. Siess-Krzyszkowski (Kraków, 2020); vol. XXXVII: Uzupełnienia z Archiwum Estreicherów, ed. by St. Siess-Krzyszkowski, Alina Baran (Kraków, 2022). Nota bene: Vol. XXIII-XXXIII ed. by S. Estreicher.
3 Estreicher, Karol: Bibliografia Polska XIX stulecia [Polish Bibliography of the 19th century]. Vol. I: Litera A, ed. by Rościsław Skręt (Kraków, 1959); vol. II: Litera B, ed. by Rościsław Skręt (Kraków, 1961); vol.III: Litera C, ed. by Rościsław Skręt (Kraków, 1962); vol. IV: D–Dramat polski, ed. by Rościsław Skręt (Kraków, 1966); vol. V: Dramat tłumaczony–Dzwony, ed. by Rościsław Skręt (Kraków, 1967); vol. VI: Litera E, ed. by Rościsław Skręt (Kraków, 1967); vol. VII: Litera F, ed. by Rościsław Skręt (Kraków,
1969); vol. VIII: G–Głuszyński, ed. by Zofia Otczyk, Stefania J. Zychowicz (Kraków, 1975); vol. IX: Gmach–Gzowski, ed. by Rościsław Skręt (Kraków, 1970); vol. X: Litera H, ed. by Stefania J. Zychowicz (Kraków, 1972); vol. XI: Litera I, ed. by Stefania J. Zychowicz (Kraków, 1976); vol. XII: Litera J, ed. by Zofia Otczyk, Stefania J. Zychowicz (Kraków, 1979); vol. XIII: K–Kalendros, ed. by Zofia Otczyk, Stefania J. Zychowicz (Kraków, 1987); vol. XIV: Kalenkiewicz–Katakumby, ed. by Stefania J. Zychowicz (Kraków, 1987); vol. XV: Katalogi, ed. by Zofia Otczyk, Anna Klinger (Kraków, 1991); vol. XVI: Katar–Knaus, ed. by Stefania J. Zychowicz (Kraków, 1990); vol. XVII: Knebel–Kopytowskij, ed. by Stefania J. Zychowicz, St. Siess-Krzyszkowski (Kraków, 2000); vol. XVIII: Kor.–Koskowski, ed. by St.
Siess-Krzyszkowski (Kraków, 2012); vol. XIX: Kösl-Kowalśkyj, ed. by T. Nastulczyk (Kraków, 2015); vol. XX: Kowanówko–Kraju, ed. by T. Nastulczyk (Kraków, 2016); vol. XXI: Krak–Kraszewski Jan Aleksander, ed. by T. Nastulczyk (Kraków, 2020); vol. XXII: Kraszewski Józef Ignacy, ed. by T. Nastulczyk (Kraków, 2021); vol. XXIII: Kreisschreiben, ed. by M. Kowalewska, T. Nastulczyk (Kraków, 2022).
4Estreicher, Karol: Bibliografia Polska XIX stulecia [Polish Bibliography of the 19th century]. Vol. I: A–F (Kraków, 1872); vol. II: G–L (Kraków, 1874); vol. III: Ł–Q (Kraków, 1876); vol. IV: R–U (Kraków, 1878); vol. V: W–Z (Kraków, 1880); t. VI: Dopełnienia A–O (Kraków, 1881); vol. VII: Dopełnienia P–Ż (Kraków, 1882); vol. I additional, i.e. VIII of Part I: A–F (Kraków, 1906); vol. II additional, i.e. IX of Part I: G–K (Kraków, 1907); vol. III additional, i.e. X of Part I: L–Q (Kraków, 1911); vol. IV additional, i.e. XI of Part I: R–Z (Kraków, 1916).
5 Estreicher, Karol: Spis chronologiczny [Chronological Register]. Vol. VIII: 1455–1799 (actually: 1455–1699) (Kraków, 1882/1883); vol. IX: Stólecie XVIII (Kraków,1888); vol. X: 1800–1870 (Kraków, 1885); vol. XI: 1871–1889 (Kraków, 1890).
6 Grzybowska, Krystyna: Estreicherowie: kronika rodzinna [Estreichers: Family Chronicle] (Kraków 1999), p. 19.
7 <https://www.estreicher.uj.edu.pl/home/>, accessed 12/06/2024.
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