The 15th (1995) edition of this directory of archives in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland was reviewed in RREA 1:94. In the five years that passed until the publication of the current edition, the information included in the directory was transferred to an electronic database, which should make it possible in the future to publish this directory every two years. It lists addresses and telephone numbers of archives and archivists. The arrangement of the listings is by country and then by type of archive. The appendixes include a personal name index, a listing of business, press, party, and institutional archives, and a selective bibliography. As a practical standard directory of archives in the German-speaking countries this publication is certainly useful, but it cannot replace more specialized directories. The usefulness of the CD-ROM that accompanies the printed volume is limited, as it takes longer to get it started and to conduct a search on it than it does to look up an address in the book. [sh/ba]

 

Existing archive address books covering all of the German-speaking areas already offer basic contact information. Consequently, a regional archives guide needs to provide more; the Handbuch der bayerischen Archive is the first to do so for this region. Included are 668 repositories. Collections include state, community, church, personal and family, business, parliamentary and party, media, and university archives. Information provided in each entry includes address, hours, and a brief description of the collection. A place index is included. This guide will form the basis for an online Bavarian Archives portal, which is currently under construction. [sh/baw]

 

These four volumes (instead of the projected three) complete the set (see RREA 1:103, 4:57, 5:51, and 6:49). The subject index complements the previously published index of personal names, but also overlaps it by including authors, publishers, printers, booksellers, and illustrators prominently featured in collections as subject entries; a single index with the different types of entry distinguished through typography would have made more sense. Names of libraries are also indexed here, along with such terms pertinent to them as names of religious orders. Careful standardization of subject terms and generous use of both preferred-term and related-term references provide considerable aid to the searcher. Also of help is the list of assigned subject terms, sorted into 23 categories, which takes up most of volume 27.

The layout and typography, however, do not promote ease of use; visible differentiation of types of entry and helpful grouping of related sub-entries are lacking. Assuming they were differentiated at the database level, a CD-ROM version of the entire set would offer much easier and more focused searching than the 23 printed volumes of entries. It would also provide keyword access to names and editions mentioned in the set but not included in the print index. Volume 27 concludes with errata for the entire set and maps of the various regions covered; the maps, however, would be more useful if each one had been included in the volume for its region. [sh/gw]

 

The compilation of this volume of the Handbuch proceeded independently from that of the previous three volumes, which dealt with collections in the Czech Republic (see RREA 6:50 for a review of volume 1). It differs from that work in covering many smaller libraries in addition to the National Library and other large collections; 58 libraries in all are represented. Listings are in alphabetical order by Slovak place name (with the exception that Martin, home of the National Library, is listed first), and are organized much as in the other volumes. Since the German collections described here are not large, much of the emphasis is on the histories of the libraries themselves, but enough information is provided to aid the mental reconstruction of earlier, eventually confiscated German holdings. See RREA 7:45 below for a review of further volumes. [sh/gw]

 

The volumes reviewed here complete the Handbuch deutscher historischer Buchbestände in Europa (HHBE) series (see RREO 98-3/4-213, and RREA 4:59, 5:52, 6:50, and 7:44 above).

Volume 8, part 1 deals with 14 libraries in St. Petersburg, with greatest weight given to the Rossiiskaia natsionalnaia biblioteka [Russian National Library] and the Rossiiskaia akademiia nauk [Russian Academy of Sciences]. Of the remaining libraries, the theater libraries are of particular interest. In contrast to some of the collections represented in other volumes of this series, the German collections in St. Petersburg are impressively rich. The volume's historical overview of libraries in Russia acknowledges the problems of access to important parts of these collections arising from the political climate of the Soviet era.

Volume 8, part 2 discusses five libraries in Moscow and 16 libraries in 14 other cities, with greatest attention given to the Rossiiskaia gosudarstvennaia biblioteka [Russian State Library], formerly Gosudarstvennaia biblioteka SSSR imeni V. I. Lenina [Lenin State Library]. The length of the remaining articles is not always a reliable indicator of the extent of the collections, some of which are sketchier than the reader might expect, e.g., the library of the university in Kaliningrad (formerly Königsberg), as well as libraries in Ivanovo and Ulyanovsk.

Volume 9 contains a surprise in its inclusion of Italy, because the editors had announced only that Croatia and Slovenia would be included. Croatia is represented by 32 libraries, most importantly those associated with Nacionalna i sveucilisna biblioteka [National and University Library] in Zagreb. The section on Slovenia contains predominantly brief articles about 32 libraries. Noteworthy are two libraries in Ljubljana, Narodna in univerzitetna knjiznica [National and University Library] and Slovenska akademija znanosti in umetnosti [Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts]. The former includes the theology faculty library, which contains a rich collection of Germanica. The sections on Croatia and Slovenia each open with a general historical overview of the region's libraries.

The section on Italy considers only eight selected libraries, with greatest emphasis given to the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. Also discussed are four other libraries in Rome: the Biblioteca Angelica, the Biblioteca Casanatense, and the libraries of the Facoltà Valdese di Teologia [Waldensian Faculty of Theology] and the Deutsches Historisches Institut [German Historical Institute]. Covered as well are the Kunsthistorisches Institut [German Institute of Art History] in Florence, the Haller Collection in the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense in Milan, and the Maria Carolina of Austria Collection in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples. Bibliographical references for the three countries are included as an appendix to the entire volume, and separate name and subject indexes are provided for each country.

The two-volume comprehensive index is modeled after the index of the Handbuch der historischen Buchbestände in Deutschland (HHBD) (see RREA 6:49 and 7:43 above). Among the challenges facing the index editors were the standardization of names in various languages (dealt with through references) and the necessity of translating the English index to volume 10 into German. An unusual feature is that, as a rule, the indexing of collections is limited to those in German-speaking countries whose materials may have been published in any language and those in non-German-speaking countries whose materials must have been published in German. This means that the non-German language entries in many volumes are not easily accessible. Corrigenda are lacking from all volumes, although some are certainly needed.

Although the completion of this series brings to a close a survey of the bulk of German historical book collections, we cannot ignore the exclusion of Switzerland and North America, whose large libraries offer rich, rare, and valuable collections. While plans have been announced for a Swiss handbook to begin publication in 2004, such a work for North America remains a mere dream. [sh/rm]

 

This third fully revised edition of a work first published in 1991 features over 1,000 Bavarian museums of all kinds and sizes. Included for each is information about location and address (also virtual), hours of opening, available catalogs and guides, and history and scope of the collection, as well as colored pictures of selected objects. Indexes by subject, place, and personal name are useful additions. An online version of this guide is available at <http://www.museen-in-bayern.de>. [sh/baw]

 

With this publication Brandenburg joins the ranks of the German states offering a directory to publicly accessible museums within their borders. This particular publication also allows a glimpse of recent developments in the evolving scene of museums in Brandenburg, in eastern Germany.

The directory is divided into two parts: the major one contains on facing pages photos and descriptions of a selected 100 or so museums, in an alphabetical listing by town name. Each entry includes a sketch of the history of the museum, collection emphases, address, and hours. Some major museums have longer entries. The second part lists the essential information (including directions, admission prices, etc.) for all 350 museums, again in one alphabetical listing. The decision to split the listings into two parts appears awkward and at times unfair to some museums that are neglected in favor of others. The directory includes an index of personal names and a subject listing (which is not always consistent). Unfortunately there is no index arranged by museum name, which would facilitate the search for a museum whose location is unknown. [sh/rs]

 

The previous edition of this guide appeared six years ago. In this new edition, the "over 560" entries are no longer arranged in a single alphabetical listing by city, but are broken up into eight regional listings. The entries offer addresses, phone numbers, hours, admission fees, and other pertinent information, but titles of published catalogs are not included. Indexes cover place names, types of museums, and areas of special collection emphases. Unlike the guide to Bavarian museums (see RREA 7:46 above), this one does not appear to have a regularly updated web version. [sh/rs]

 

Sixty-two public and private museums of all kinds--e.g., art, local history, industry--are described in this small guide to the museum scene in the Swiss canton of Thurgau. Arranged alphabetically by place, most of the entries are one page long and include a color photograph. An appendix lists addresses, hours, ticket prices, and practical information, which is current as of April 2001. A subject index is offered as well. [sh/nb]

Dizionario di biblioteconomia: con una scelta della terminologia dell'informazione e documentazione, della reprografia, bibliologia, istruzione universitaria e informatica: tedesco-italiano, italiano-tedesco = Wörterbuch des Bibliothekswesens [Dictionary of Librarianship: Including a Selection from the Terminology of Information Science, Reprography, Library History, Higher Education, and Informatics: German-Italian, Italian-German]. Eberhard Sauppe. München: Saur, 2001. xvii, 354 p. 22 cm. ISBN 3-598-11396-X: DM 178.00 [01-1-027]

After his planned German-French/French-German glossary failed to materialize, Sauppe's Italian bilingual glossary (with 10,901 German-Italian and 9,722 Italian-German entries, according to the foreword) joins earlier versions in English and Spanish. Compared with those works, the subject indicators associated with each term have been reduced to the minimum necessary, but the citations to reference works and standards documents have remained. [sh/gw]