Reference library and card catalogues Fachbibliothek und Zettelkataloge
The reference library, in room 1.10 of the main building, is an open-shelf collection of about 14,600 volumes and 120 current periodicals, strongest in numismatics, diplomatics, editing, the history of writing and the regional history that the Institute works on, together with the reference books those subjects need. Nothing is lent out: not to visitors, and not to the Institute's own staff except by a morning's entry in the loan book. The catalogue is still on cards, fourteen drawers of them, with a separate series of cross-references.
1. What is on the shelves
| Class | Subject | Volumes | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | Reference and bibliography | 1,120 | Regional dictionaries, Latin and Middle Low German dictionaries, tables for converting dates, national coin catalogues. Books in this class may not leave the library room. |
| B | Numismatics and monetary history | 3,240 | Includes photocopies of the working papers of the Institute's catalogues, reports of hoards and mint histories. Bound periodicals are counted separately. |
| C | Diplomatics and archival studies | 2,860 | Formularies, sigillography, archive history. Strong in older descriptions, thin in recent publications; see Table 5. |
| D | Editing and textual scholarship | 1,680 | Conventions, the treatment of variants, indexing; about four hundred editions issued by other institutions, kept for comparison of practice. |
| E | History of writing and manuscripts | 1,940 | Script history, work on scribes, bindings and fragments, provenance. |
| F | Regional history: Lower Saxony and the upper Weser | 2,440 | Local histories, parish histories, town histories, genealogies. Many of these carry earlier readers' notes, which are left in place. |
| G | The Institute's own publications and offprints | 1,340 | The series, the source booklets and the Mitteilungen, with a separate cabinet of about eight hundred offprints received, filed by the name of the sender. |
| — | Periodicals, current and bound | 120 titles | Eleven of them come by exchange. Bound volumes stand by title; missing issues are noted on the card in the periodical wallet. |
The figures count volumes, not titles: a second edition, a reprint and an offprint of the same work are counted separately, as they have been since 1951 and as the cards are arranged. The whole library runs to about 14,600 volumes.
2. The card catalogues
The catalogue is on cards, in fourteen drawers in two places: the eight drawers of authors and titles stand to the right of the library door, the six of classes and subjects in the passage between the library and the reading room. The cards are the standard 7.5 by 12.5 cm, typed or handwritten from 1951 onwards, typed throughout the 1980s, and since 2004 typeset by Division V on a computer and printed — on paper, as before.
| Catalogue | Drawers | Arrangement and remarks |
|---|---|---|
| Authors | 5 | Alphabetical by surname; corporate authors are filed under the first significant word of the institution's name, mixed in with personal names. |
| Titles | 3 | Alphabetical by the first significant word of the title, articles disregarded; cross-referenced both ways with the author catalogue. |
| Classes | 4 | Under the seven classes A to G, and within a class by year of publication; different editions of one work stand separately. |
| Subjects | 2 | By subject heading, the headings following the Institute's authority file; variant forms get a cross-reference card and are not merged. |
| Periodical wallets | separate cabinet | One wallet for each title, recording the title, whether it comes by exchange or subscription, the years received and the gaps. This cabinet is not counted among the fourteen drawers. |
Three points about the catalogue. One: it exists only on cards. There is no electronic catalogue, and no way of searching the library from this site. To ask whether a book is held, telephone extension 15 or write; the card will be looked up and you will be told whether the book is there and under which class. Two: the cards follow the practice fixed in 1951, which differs from modern cataloguing rules — the place of publication is given as the town only, without a country, and a series title goes at the foot of the card. The Institute has no intention of converting them, the work being great and the gain small. Three: cards sometimes carry pencil notes, usually made by a former librarian to record a missing page, a faulty binding or a duplicate elsewhere. Such notes are kept, not copied out and not rubbed away.
3. Exchange of periodicals
The exchange began in the inflation of 1923, when the book fund was worth nothing and the Institute traded duplicate index cards for the publications of institutions abroad. In its present form the Institute's own publications are exchanged for another institution's periodical or series, the principle being a roughly equal volume of print and no money changing hands. There are eleven exchanges at present.
| From | Institution | What is exchanged |
|---|---|---|
| 1923 | Vienna: an institution for diplomatics and the auxiliary historical sciences | Periodical and annual report |
| 1923 | Zürich: the manuscript department of a cantonal library | Periodical on manuscript studies |
| 1924 | Uppsala: the library school of a university | Periodicals on librarianship and archives |
| 1954 | Hannover: the state archive | Archival periodical and annual report |
| 1961 | Brunswick: a local historical society | Local historical annual |
| 1968 | Hildesheim: a church archive office | Periodicals on church history and archives |
| 1975 | Bologna: a university institute of diplomatics | Journal of diplomatics |
| 1984 | Brno: the city archive | Numismatic and archival periodicals |
| 1991 | Copenhagen: a university coin collection | Numismatic journal and collection report |
| 2003 | Ghent: a university research group in medieval history | Periodicals on medieval history and diplomatics |
| 2016 | Kraków: the coin department of a museum, introduced by a partner institution | Museum annual report and collection catalogues |
4. Using the library
| Matter | Practice |
|---|---|
| Hours | Wednesday and Thursday 10.00 to 15.30, without an interval at midday. Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays are for the Institute's own staff. Consultation is granted only against a written appointment. |
| Coming in | Register first at the academic office; coats and bags go into the lockers in the hall. Pencils and slips of paper are provided; ink pens stay in the locker. |
| Open shelves | All seven classes are open. Put a place card from the desk in the gap where you take a book, and reshelve it by class number when you have done. |
| Loans | None, to anybody. Where a member of staff needs a book in another room, the head of division enters it with the library and it is returned the same day. |
| Copying | There is no copier in the library. Complete a slip and the library will copy for you at €0.25 a page in black and white. Older or tightly bound books are not copied; an image file is supplied instead. |
| Reference books | Class A does not leave the library room. If a dictionary is needed at a desk in the reading room, tell the duty officer, who will enter it in the book. |
| Periodicals | The current year stands on the sloping rack by the door and may be taken down freely; bound volumes are in the cabinets along the back wall and are fetched on a slip. |
| Food and drink | Not in the room. There is a water tap in the passage outside. |
5. Gaps in the holdings
The library matches the Institute's work reasonably well, but it has gaps and knows where they are. About €2,400 a year was available for purchases, including subscriptions, before the reduction; for 2026 the book fund has been cut to the subscriptions alone and no new books are being bought, so the gaps below are not being closed for the present. A reader who would like a book bought may still put a suggestion slip, kept in the wooden box by the library door, into the box; the library collects them and they are kept for whenever the fund is restored. There is no undertaking to buy, and for 2026 the annual report states the position rather than answering suggestions one by one.
| Gap | Reason, and what is being done |
|---|---|
| Foreign numismatic monographs published after 1990 | Price and language. Only selected titles are bought; the exchange with Copenhagen is being widened to cover more of them. |
| Technical manuals on digitisation and image management | The Institute does not develop systems, so only four basic manuals are held; technical questions are put to partner institutions. |
| Editions of eastern European charters | Many have appeared since 1989 and the Institute holds only twelve. Exchange is being tried; purchase is not contemplated at present. |
| Large illustrated histories of bookbinding | Too large and too expensive. Interlibrary loan and reading them in another library are used instead. |
| A new dictionary of Middle Low German | First item on the purchase plan for 2025, at about €480. |
The holdings figures and the list of gaps were compiled by the librarian, Mrs Bauer, and are revised twice a year, in March and September. A fuller account of the library appears in the "library" section of each issue of the Mitteilungen.
Questions whether a book is held, or whether a particular year of a periodical has arrived, should go to the library, extension 15.
Page WI-SER-01 · compiled by C. Bauer · edited by the academic office · last modified 18 September 2026