Virtual Reconstruction of Scattered Book Collections of Bohemical Provenance in the Czech and Foreign Libraries

The project is a follow-up to a research of book provenances (ownership marks and records in books) in the National Museum Library. The project objective is to map Bohemical library collections (libraries with Czech owners) or their fragments in the Czech Republic (particularly in chateau libraries and in collections of the National Library of the Czech Republic) and in foreign libraries, and to innovate the online database of book owners PROVENIO for recording information on these collections. The research of the provenance is carried out primarily in library collections of Czech chateaux and castles in cooperation with the National Museum Library and National Heritage Institute, in the National Library in the so-called Reserve collection, and in the historical collection Bibliotheca Nationalis. The research of originally Bohemical book collections abroad will focus on libraries in Paris, Wroclaw, Görlitz, Bautzen, Regensburg and Zagreb.

Project name: Virtual Reconstruction of Scattered Book Collections of Bohemical Provenance in the Czech and Foreign Libraries
Code: DG18P02OVV009
Duration: 2018–2022
Agency: NAKI II. (Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic)
Project type: consortial (NM as the principal investigator)
NM’s investigator: PhDr. Richard Šípek, Ph.D.
Other participants: National Library of the Czech Republic (Mgr. Tomáš Foltýn), National Heritage Institute (PhDr. Pavel Hájek)

Anticipated results/outputs:
The project results will be published through the database of book owners PROVENIO and in the form of five exhibitions (four standard and one virtual) dedicated to nobility libraries in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, surviving testimonies to the culture of reading in the past, nobility sponsorship of literature, and fragments of old library collections in the Reserve collection of the National Library.
Other planned outputs are two books about old Bohemical libraries and their fragments scattered in both Czech and foreign libraries. Within the project, a methodology of research, revision, and passportisation of historical book collections will also be elaborated.