Österreichische Retrospektive Bibliographie. München: Saur, 2000. (Reihe 2. Österreichische Zeitungen 1492‐1945)

Citation

Kelly, W.A. (2005), "Österreichische Retrospektive Bibliographie. München: Saur, 2000. (Reihe 2. Österreichische Zeitungen 1492‐1945)", Library Review, Vol. 54 No. 2, pp. 137-139. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530510583101

The introduction to volume two of this series repeats the assurance made in volume one, published in 2001, that Austria is one of the few European countries which still does not have a retrospective bibliography. An attempt to rectify this lack was made a century and a half ago by the Viennese scholar, Franz Gräffer, but nothing came of it, partly because no publisher would take the financial risk involved – a situation which rings very familiarly in my ear, after an enormous bibliographical handbook on which I had been working for around seven years had been rejected by three print publishers as being commercially unviable; however, I was luckier than Gräffer, as it was snapped up very quickly thereafter and made available online by a leading German library. For some years now the Austrian National Library has set itself the task of putting flesh on the bones of Gräffer's vision by producing a database of relevant imprints, whose geographical limits have been reduced to the present‐day boundaries of Austria. In ten years the bibliographical details of around 30,000 imprints have been recorded, drawn from the holdings of that library itself, the catalogues of other institutions and secondary bibliographies. Again the introduction to the first of these four volumes repeats for our benefit the assertion made by Dr Helmut Lang in the first volume that the Austrian National Library holds only around half of these titles, a fact which, while telling us much about the limitations of a national library which has its origins in a court or a private institution's collection, helps to reinforce the absolute necessity of collaboration in the production of a retrospective national bibliography.

Several research grants from the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Culture to the Austrian National Library made in parallel to the latter's own financial and staff commitment have made it possible to enlarge its database of Austrian newspapers and other periodically published titles to include new or other parts of existing titles held elsewhere. Only in the year prior to publication – Dr Lang's introduction is dated September 2002 – was the database enriched by the addition of more than 1,500 titles which, while not newspapers in the strictest sense of the term, nevertheless include the word, Zeitung, a case of common sense overcoming rigidly imposed systematisation. The result of all this effort is that we now have a thoroughly complete list, running to over 6,500 titles, of newspapers and associated publications issued within the present boundaries of Austria with details of editor(s), publication dates, publisher, printer and details of holdings.

The bibliographical information contained in these four volumes is preceded by two short narrative essays, the first by Ladislaus Lang on how an accurate record of the holdings of Austrian periodical publications has been established and the second by Helmut Lang on the beginnings of the publication of such works in Austria. There follow a list of bibliographies and secondary literature cited in the main part of the work, a selective bibliography on the history of the press in Austria until 1945, the identifying symbols of the libraries, with their postal addresses, whose holdings have been recorded and finally a list of abbreviations used in the main work. Each entry in the main part of the work gives the title in bold letters with the place and dates of publication in brackets, supported on the following lines by more specific dates of publication, e.g. day and month of year, the format and periodicity of publicity, the imprint, any additional information, e.g. breaks in publication, whether the title was a supplement to another, larger work, and then details of runs held by libraries. The titles are listed in two columns to the page in a legible layout which is never wearing on the eye.

Of these four volumes the first two are taken up with the catalogue proper and the other two with indexes of various kinds. I was struck immediately by the richness of the local newspaper activity, particularly the number of local newspapers intended to provide news from home for troops fighting in World War I, e.g. the twice‐weekly “Karnisch‐julische Kriegszeitung: Nachrichten für unsere Truppen im Felde”. The range of both titles and the special interest groups for which they were published is as wide as one can imagine. Taking one two‐page spread at random, e.g. 268‐269 of v.3, these include the savings bank movement, Christians, haulage contractors, practitioners of natural healing, deaf and dumb, distilling industry and various sports groups.

The two volumes of indexes, again published in two columns to the page, are laid out in as legible a manner as the two earlier volumes, with directions to the series number, the volume in the series and the individual entry in the volume, e.g. 2,3:5147. A quick, highly random cross‐checking of the entries in these index volumes against individual entries in the main sequence found no errors.

For me the most intellectually rewarding index is that of publications issued in languages other than German. Even with the geographical restrictions imposed on the database it is interesting to see the range of languages represented. Although many of the titles were doubtlessly intended for consumption by members of other linguistic groups found elsewhere in the Austro‐Hungarian Empire, who were resident in Austria proper, whether for a short‐ or a long‐term, it is still puzzling to understand without further social and demographic research the need to produce newspapers in other languages such as Greek, Arabic, Lithuanian, Spanish, English, French or Italian.

As with the first volume in this series the Austrian National Library is to be congratulated on the number of staff and the amount of staff time devoted to this part of the project. The fact that this is precisely the kind of bibliographical activity in which a national library should be engaged has to be reiterated in the face of the emphasis now put in the profession on such useful but essentially secondary skills as written and verbal communication. However, the mystery in the preliminaries to the first volume is that the name of Dr Helmut Lang, a distinguished student of the book trade in Austria, who is described inter alia as deputy director of the Austrian National Library, has not appeared on its web site for well over a year and my e‐mail to the director and to Ladislaus Lang, enquiring after Dr Lang, is still unanswered even after many months.

The present volumes of this second series, which are an essential acquisition for any research library with a serious interest in Austrian bibliography and history, cannot fail to maintain Saur's reputation, proudly proclaimed on its web site as a leading publisher of biographical and bibliographical reference titles. I look forward eagerly to the publication of the remaining two series of this project, Österreichische Drucke (Monographien) 1461‐1800 and Österreichische Zeitschriften 1705‐1945.