Annual reports and the Mitteilungen Mitteilungen des Instituts, Jahrgänge 1957 bis 2024
The Mitteilungen is the Institute's oldest periodical. It began in 1957 as a duplicated sheet appearing twice a month, became an annual volume in 1962, and carries the annual report together with working notes, method, corrections and the record of projects. Sixty-two issues have appeared up to 2024 and there has never been a gap. Between 1968 and 1990 single articles were also circulated as offprints before the volume appeared, which is why the same piece of work can appear twice in a list of publications.
1. How the volume is arranged
| Item | Practice |
|---|---|
| Frequency | Annual, published in the last quarter of the year. Twice monthly from 1957 to 1961. |
| Length | 100 to 160 pages, according to the working notes and the reports of that year. |
| Standing sections | 1, the annual report, being the divisional accounts of the year's work; 2, method, being procedures and conventions; 3, the record of projects; 4, corrections; 5, staff and correspondence. |
| The annual report | Gives each division's number of new descriptions, publications, visitors, a summary of the accounts and the plan for the following year. The summary of accounts lists headings only, not individual sums. |
| Corrections | Corrections to the series and to the source booklets are printed here in the following issue. No separate correction lists are issued. |
| Offprints | Members of staff may take up to fifty offprints of a single article; the pagination and the issue number are those of the volume. |
| Print run | 420 copies an issue: 290 complimentary, 60 kept in stock, 70 for sale. |
| Price | €6.00 to €12.00 according to length; no charge to those entitled to complimentary copies (section 3 below). |
2. Selected list of issues
The contents of the issues from 1957 to 1999 are being indexed by a student assistant under project WI-2023-12; 1,640 entries for the years 1962 to 1999 have been made and the index is expected in 2026. What follows selects the issues from 2000 onwards and a few earlier ones of particular interest.
| Issue | Year | Pages | Principal contents | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| dup. I–IV | 1957–61 | 8–16 | The duplicated years, numbered by year rather than consecutively. Institute notices, progress of the card indexes, notes on visitors. Complete sets survive only in the Institute and in two partner institutions. | — |
| 1 | 1962 | 28 | The first annual volume; explains the change from the duplicated sheet and the new arrangement. | — |
| 7 | 1968 | 52 | Sets out the conventions used in volume I of the Lüneburg charters, with a note of corrections to come. | — |
| 11 | 1972 | 64 | First edition of the formulary types of the ducal chancery, pp. 18–26. | — |
| 19 | 1980 | 88 | The decision adopting "Minting and writing compared" as a priority of the Institute, printed in full. | — |
| 20 | 1981 | 92 | Minutes of the first Wolfenbüttel colloquium, with thirty-one participants. | — |
| 21 | 1982 | 96 | Report on the seal impression archive SG-1 and the environmental record of the stores, then printed week by week for the first time. | — |
| 31 | 1992 | 104 | Index of contents of the Institute's publications, 1957–1990, with 1,140 entries. | — |
| 33 | 1994 | 108 | Interim report on the first microfilming run; the laboratory's equipment list, printed as a table for the first time. | — |
| 39 | 2000 | 112 | The conclusion of the change to the three-part card; a note on the Institute's first appearance on the Internet in 1996, with the text of the page reproduced. | — |
| 40 | 2001 | 118 | Semi-quantitative analysis of coin alloys: a note on method, pp. 12–24. | €6.00 |
| 41 | 2002 | 124 | Recording the five features of a hand, pp. 32–44. | €6.00 |
| 45 | 2006 | 132 | The seal impression archive SG-1, its history and condition, 1938–2005, pp. 8–17. | €8.00 |
| 46 | 2007 | 136 | The statistical treatment of weight distributions, 2nd edition, as a supplement. | €8.00 |
| 47 | 2008 | 140 | Interim report on the experimental card-index search of 2006–2007, a facility withdrawn in 2013. | €8.00 |
| 51 | 2012 | 144 | Dating undated charters from five groups of evidence, pp. 22–31. | €8.00 |
| 52 | 2013 | 146 | The Institute's editorial conventions, 4th edition, as a supplement of twenty-six pages. | €12.00 |
| 55 | 2016 | 152 | Notes on the third edition of the internal data rules and on the fixing of capture parameters. | €10.00 |
| 56 | 2017 | 148 | Revision of the working note on the examination of old bindings; the year's environmental record. | €10.00 |
| 60 | 2021 | 154 | How the work was arranged in 2020 while the reading room was closed, with the duty rota; the first assessment of the fibre projector fault. | €10.00 |
| 61 | 2023 | 148 | Annual report 2022/23. Divisional accounts of the year, summary of the accounts, list of publications, and the table of dates of the Institute, 1897–2024, pp. 11–19; also the draft rules for headings in the subject index, pp. 26–40. | €12.00 |
| 62 | 2024 | in the press | Annual report 2023/24. To contain the draft calibration rules, the specimen pages of the conventions for account material, and the first draft of the twelve types of marginal annotation. Expected in the first quarter of 2025. | to be fixed |
An old arrangement worth knowing about. Between 1968 and 1990 a number of working notes were first circulated as offprints from the Mitteilungen and were absorbed into the series some years later, so that the same work may appear twice in a list of publications — a study printed first as an offprint from issue 33 and later published as volume 12 of the series, for instance. The earlier entry is not deleted, because the pagination of the offprint differs from that of the book and older citations would otherwise become impossible to check. When citing such a piece, give both the series volume and the issue number. A reader who wants a single chronological list will find one in the catalogue of publications, volume 16 of the series.
3. Complimentary copies, exchange and sale
| Category | Practice |
|---|---|
| Complimentary | Partner institutions, corresponding associates, those who transcribe for the Institute, those who send offprints, and public archives and museums in the Land. |
| Exchange | Under the arrangement begun in 1923, the Institute's publications are exchanged for the periodicals of institutions abroad. There are eleven exchanges at present; the principle is a roughly equal volume of print, and no money changes hands. |
| Sale | Remaining copies are sold at cost, postage extra. Write to the academic office giving the issue number and how many copies. There is no online shop, no card payment, and no receipt other than an invoice. |
| Out of stock | Issues before no. 40 are mostly gone. Single articles from them may be applied for under section 4.4 of the rules of use. |
4. What the recent annual reports say
| Issue, year | Substance |
|---|---|
| 57 2018 | 341 new descriptions; 218,930 cards in the indexes; 172 visitors and 704 written enquiries; series volume 31. Noted: the form of record for the hand-comparison table was made uniform. |
| 58 2019 | 386 new descriptions; 196 visitors; series volumes 32 (two of them). Noted: the internal data rules were extended to cover test records. |
| 59 2020 | Reading interrupted from March; 62 visitors and 690 enquiries in the year, but the number of card entries rose to 442 because the work could be done at home. Noted: the arrangement of work and the duty rota during the closure. |
| 60 2021 | Reading resumed in stages from May; 412 new descriptions; series volume 33. Noted: the stock-taking of the negatives of the card indexes began. |
| 61 2023 | Annual report 2022/23. 377 new descriptions; 204 visitors and 806 enquiries; the twelfth colloquium with sixty-eight participants; series volume 35. Noted: the decision to leave the fibre projector unrepaired. |
The figures in Table 4, the annual figures on the home page and the catalogue on the research data page all come from the same stock-taking by Division V, which is now made twice a year, brought together by the academic office. Where they differ, the final figures printed in the annual report prevail; the home page and this page give working figures, and a reader quoting them should say which has been used.
Compiled from the publications register (archive, ref. PUB-1) and checked against the reference library's holdings on 1 September 2026, and brought up to date when Mitteilungen no. 63 appears, which is not expected before the second half of 2027.
Page WI-PUB-03 · compiled by M. Tiedemann · read by the director's office · last modified 18 September 2026