Wieści z gniazda Narodowej Bibliografii Polskiej i dwie postacie „Estreichera”

Abstrakt

The direct stimulus for us to write this paper came from the conference initiated by the Consortium of European Research Libraries (CERL) with organizational support from Wrocław-based Ossolineum and titled The Vitality and Dynamics of Retrospective “National” Bibliographies for European Print Cultures to the Middle of the Nineteenth Century. The participants in this symposium (mainly from European Union member states) presented advances in their work on compiling more or less complex bibliographies of their national literatures. This bibliographical meeting also produced a tangible outcome: the book Never Finish(ed): The Vitality and Dynamics of Retrospective ‘National’ Bibliographies for European Print Cultures to the Middle of the Nineteenth Century (CERL PapersXV), edited by Olga Tkachuk, Marian Lefferts & Claudia Fabian, Wiesbaden 2024, published with the financial support from the Lanckoronski Foundation.

The session motto, as indicated in the conference title, was “retrospective bibliographies”. Therefore, one of the main themes of our lecture given at the conference, on the subject of the Estreicher’s Bibliography (On the Estreicher’s Bibliography as a Research Tool and as a Historic Object), was inevitably the topic, so obvious for us, immersed in Polish literary culture, of a double retrospective approach which we explained in the context of our duty as researchers to look upon the work of Estreichers not only as a source, a bibliographic list, but also as a unique cultural asset. In this article, we discuss this topic from yet another perspective. It addresses the research method adopted by Estreicher, main attributes of the material subject to scientific analysis, carried out in the spirit and using the methodology characteristic of the time of compilation of the Bibliography (this, among others, constitutes the double retrospective approach described!).

This aspect is also related to the work method and technique we use in the final volumes of the Old Polish bibliography. Additionally, it is directly related to the idea of the Electronic Database of the Estreicher’s Bibliography which came from our Team. The rules defining its structure, including all parameters of an Estreicherian description, are discussed in this article. We also show, and encourage researchers to consider, how the Bibliography transcends the limits of ordinary bibliographic compilations, i.e. how this work may be used not only as bibliographic information but also as a research tool. Finally: what are the development directions of research on the complete Estreicher’s Bibliography to be undertaken in the urgently needed times of rational management of basic research, especially that focused on a national heritage. Our research tool, the Electronic Database of the Estreicher’s Bibliography, has become one of fundamental instruments here, for Polish humanities.

In our last, tenth footnote, we indicate material omissions and mistakes relating to the Estreicher’s Bibliography and found in the catalogue of the exhibition accompanying the CERL Session.