On-line provenance resources

Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Russia, Scotland, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States

See also: Incunables and Extracts from the CERL Newsletter

The Special Collections Department of Salzburg University Library has prepared online lists of former owners of their manuscripts and early printed books: Verzeichnis der Vorbesitzer von Handschriften, Inkunabeln, Frühdrucken und Rara der Universitätsbibliothek Salzburg. The alphabetical lists are arranged in four columns by inverted normalised name; dates; notes; and shelfmarks.
There is also a useful set of pages giving the history of the collections within the Library.

The Section of Old and Rare Books (‘Réserve précieuse/Kostbare Werken’) has been cataloguing the provenances of old and rare books since the beginning of the 1990s. This information can now be consulted on-line.

Areas covered include incunables (see also below under Incunables) and post-incunables but also the 17th and 18th century books printed in Brussels (about 20.000 items) and for quite a number of old and rare imprints which are recent acquisitions or have been retrospectively catalogued.

For information on the post-incunables, see the Royal Library’s website. Contact name: Bart Op de Beeck, Responsible for the Section of Old and Rare Books (odbeeck@kbr.be).

Dr Christian Coppens is investigating present location of items from the collection of incunables which belonged to the Premonstratensian Abbey of Park before its sale in 1829.
Further information with a description of the provenance indicators of books from the Bibliotheca Parchensis and some photographs.

Database of missing books
In addition to the list of Det Kongelige Bibliotek’s missing books and their history, this site gives detailed information on owners’ marks, stamps, monograms, bindings, etc. which characterise and identify books having their origin in the royal collections.

Base Provenance des livres anciens
The Provenance database features marks encountered in the Rare Book and Manuscript collections of the Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon, marks of ownership as well as marks of censorship, reading, prices, etc. Each record includes images, detailed information on names, marks, dates, etc. and links to the library's catalogue.

Marks of provenance can be retrieved also by their English and German equivalent in the advanced search only (Recherche avancée / Marque de provenance). These terms are listed on the homepage of the database

Reliures estampées à froid
The Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève, Paris, has launched a valuable web-based database of its blind-stamped bindings found on manuscripts and printed books from the 12th to the 18th centuries. In addition to digitised images of rubbings showing the binding tools used, and notes on the origins of the bindings, the database has an index of provenances for the books in question.

From the main page, click on ‘‘Recherche’’ to go to the search page, and then use the ‘‘Provenance’’ search field. The ‘‘Index’’ link produces a clickable list of all the provenance names in the database.

Reliures
The Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, has launched a web-based database of bindings which can be accessed by workshop, owners, type technique material etc., date, and date of acquisition by BnF.

Les Marques de collections de dessins & d’estampes
In 2010, the Fondation Custodia, together with the Musée du Louvre and the Dutch RKD published an online version of the publication Les marques de collections de dessins & d’estampes, prepared by Frits Lugt in 1921 and supplemented by him in 1956. Around 10,000 marks have been gathered, of which 6,400 have been put online and around 5,000 have been identified.

A virtual recreation of a fifteenth-century library. The library once present at the Carthusian monastery of Buxheim, Germany, was one of the largest of its kind. The manuscripts now reside in over fifty libraries across Europe and North America, and some remain in private hands. Many remain unlocated or unidentified since their sale and dispersion at auction in 1883.
You may view the manuscript catalogs of c. 1450, 1693 and 1755. There is a page illustrating 17th/18th century Buxheim provenance inscriptions. The site is the work of Dr William Whobrey at Yale University.

Starting with an Ad-hoc Group on Provenance in 2007, the HeBIS network eventually established a broader HeBIS Working Group on Old Collections. The group is running a provenance mailing list (postings in German as well as English language) with many international subscribers from museums, archives and libraries actively discussing questions of provenance research. New subscribers are welcome.

Provenance information in Hessen is added to the HeBIS-Verbundkatalog and can be searched by selecting the index “Provenienzen/Exemplarspezifika(PRV)”. It is soon to become retrievable directly from the CERL Thesaurus as well.
For further information, see the HeBIS Website (German language).

The Wissenschaftliche Stadtbibliothek Mainz is adding provenance names (for persons and institutions) to the records in its OPAC. Select the search field PRO (Provenienz) and search, for example, for “Karmeliterkloster Mainz”.
The library is a member of the HeBIS Network.

http://www.bayerische-landesbibliothek-online.de/exlibris About 600 bookplates from Bavarian monasteries can be searched alphabetically, with hyperlinks to the Haus der Bayerischen Geschichte which provides information on the history of each monastery.

The Staatliche Bibliothek Regensburg has an online list of former owners (personal and institutional) in its collections up to the year 1830 (with a few later collections). There are digitised images of booklates, binding stamps, etc. and an index of Regensburg institutions to which personal owners can be associated.

The T-PRO | Thesaurus der Provenienzbegriffe LINK http://provenienz.gbv.de/T-PRO_Thesaurus_der_Provenienzbegriffe is developed by the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek Weimar and draws on Provenance Evidence - Thesaurus for Use in Rare Book and Special Collections Cataloguing (Chicago: American Library Association, Association of College and Research Libraries, 1988) and the work of the Bibliothèque municipale, Lyon. Terms are offered in German, English and French. – Since 2009, the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek and the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz have exercised editorial responsibilities for the thesaurus.

Since 1997, the library has been adding provenance names (for persons and institutions) and provenance terms (using the T-PRO | Thesaurus der Provenienzbegriffe LINK http://provenienz.gbv.de/T-PRO_Thesaurus_der_Provenienzbegriffe) to the records in its OPAC LINK http://opac.ub.uni-weimar.de/DB=2/LNG=DU/. Select the search field PRV (“Provenienzen”). There is also an OPAC LINK http://opac.ub.uni-weimar.de/DB=2.3/ comprising Nazi looted art (“NS-Raubgut”) with more detailed information on provenance and which offers the option to search for collections (“Sammlungen”).

LAIT: Libri antichi in Toscana, 1501-1885
The LAIT database, directed by Regione Toscana, one of CERL’s members organisations, is now available on the web. There are over 7,000 entries with provenance information, which can be searched using the search field `‘Possessori’’.

http://www.archiviodistato.firenze.it/ceramellipapiani2/index.php?page=Home
Coat of arms Database
From the Ceramelli Papiani collection.

http://www.araldicavaticana.com/
Coat of arms Database
Arms of Popes, Cardinals, and Religious Orders.

Coat of arms Database
The library's coat of arms database contains some 1,000 arms of owners and dedicatees found in manuscripts and incunabula in the Casanatense library. The database is particularly helpful for the identification of anonymous arms, thanks to the 'esperta' search option, by 'figure', 'smalti', and 'partizioni'.
http://archivi.casanatense.it/SearchDoc.htm?Level=3
http://opac.casanatense.it/Consistenza.htm
Further information from Dott.ssa Laura Giallombardo, Responsabile del Fondo Araldico, Biblioteca Casanatense, Rome.

The Libraries of the suppressed Religious Houses, Rome, 1876 (updated February 2008).
Following the suppression of the religious houses in Rome (1873) as a consequence of the creation of the new Kingdom of Italy with Rome as its capital, the libraries of the suppressed religious houses were confiscated for the benefit of the newly created National Central Library (1876).
In her article ‘The computerised archive of owners in the older publications database of SBN: the experience of the National Central Library of Rome’, CERL Papers V, 2005, pp. 43-53 (see above), Marina Venier (Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Rome) describes the process of confiscation and the attempts of the religious to avoid the loss of their books. The Appendix to her article is reproduced here, listing the 78 libraries confiscated, their size and religious affiliation, reference to surviving catalogues of the original collections, and reproduction of ownership stamps and labels from many of the collections.

http://www.marcasdefuego.buap.mx/
'Fire marks' are a form of provenance evidence which was frequently burnt into the fore edges of the books and also in the front cover or the endsheets. This type of brand was used in the Colonial period, in New Spain, by various religious orders and institutions such as colleges or seminaries, and also by private individuals. This Website presents a collective catalogue, with digital images belonging to different institutions. Since it is a collective catalogue the number of libraries participating will be increasing in the near future.

Authors of the catalogues Jose Maria Library Historical Library, BUAP and Franciscan Library, UDLAP, from Puebla, México, are:

* Dr. María Idalia Garcia Aguilar (Centro Universitario de Investigaciones Bibliotecologicas, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico), who published an illustrated article on the subject: 'Libros marcados con fuego' ('Emblemata', 13 (2007), pp. 271-299; ISSN 1137-1056).

* Mercedes Isabel Salomon Salazar (Biblioteca Jose Maria Lafragua, BUAP, Puebla, Mexico) and Andrew Green (Instituto de Investigaciones Doctor Jose María Luis Mora, Mexico) have published an essay titled: 'Las marcas de fuego: propuesta de una metodologia para su identificacion'in 'Leer en tiempos de la Colonia: imprenta, bibliotecas y lectores en la Nueva Espana'; Idalia Garcia Aguilar and Pedro Rueda Ramirez, compilers (UNAM, México, 2010, pp. 341-366; ISBN: 978-607-02-0750-1).
Download the PDF file.

A database of bookbindings in Polish Collections was created in April 2011, in the Library of the Poznań Society of Friends of Sciences. It is the first database of precious bookbindings from the 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th centuries for this part of Europe.

The library stores c.15,000 incunabula and old prints made between the 16th and 18th centuries. Many of them are covered with original bookbindings. Especially interesting is the rich collection of not widely known Polish bookbindings.

As part of its Displaced Cultural Valuables project, the Library for Foreign Literature has produced an electronic database of owners’ inscriptions of rare and displaced editions in major European languages based on the VGBIL’s rare books collections. The project web page http://spoils.libfl.ru/ (with Russian and English versions) provides access to the electronic version of the ‘‘Spoils of War’’ International Newsletter and to the on-line database of provenance marks from the collection.

The collection is particularly strong in books with German library provenances.

The easiest way to navigate the database is to use the pull-down menu of owners’ names. An account of the project in French can be found in the Nouvelles du livre ancien, no. 116 (hiver-printemps 2005) pages 3-9.

The Library for Foreign Literature has also produced a printed version of the information: The Foreign book signs in the Rare Book Collection of the Library for Foreign Literature – founder M. Rudomino, ed. E. Zhuravleva, N. Zubkov and E. Korkmazova, Moscow, 1999, 448 p. ISBN 5-7380-0108-5.

The Private lives of books
Catalogue of an exhibition arranged in conjunction with CERL’s 2004 Annual Seminar Books and their owners: Provenance information and the European cultural heritage (published as CERL Papers V.
Download catalogue as PDF file

The Universitat de Barcelona has created a database catalogue of Former Owners: http://www.bib.ub.edu/fileadmin/posseidors/home_eng.htm. The records have digitised images of signatures and other provenance marks. The search interface is available in Catalan, Spanish and English.

Former owners can also be searched on the online catalogue of the University of Barcelona (http://cataleg.ub.edu/ in Catalan, http://cataleg.ub.edu/*eng in English). It is possible to limit the search to “Ancient books”. In the field “author” there are indexed the former owners with the designation “(ant. pos.)”. They appear as a secondary entry in the bibliographic records and in the specific copy field.

Information about the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library of the University of Barcelona can be found in its web site http://www.bib.ub.edu/en/libraries/rare-book/.

As part of its work on the history of the Royal Library, the Real Biblioteca is creating two databases of interest for provenance research.

• Encuadernaciones de la Real Biblioteca : a database of bookbindings with digitised images

• Base de datos de Ex libris de la Real Biblioteca : a database of armorial bindings, stamps, bookplates and inscriptions of former owners of items in its collections, with digitised images.
  On the search page, the pull-down menu labelled 'Identificación' gives an alphabetical list of the persons indexed in the database, who are mainly members of the royal family, aristocrats or scholars. The data range from the 16th to the 19th centuries.

Februry 2008: 1200 provenance records for books in the Biblioteca Histórica Marqués de Valdecilla have been added to the CERL Thesaurus.

The web site of the Biblioteca Histórica Marqués de Valdecilla has information about the history of the university and its libraries and about the provenances of its historical collections.

Previous owners can be search for through the Rare Books on-line catalogue, by selecting the author field in the drop-down menu and typing the name with the addition of ‘ant. pos.’ (former owner).

E.g. to search for books which belonged to the Colegio Mayor San Ildefonso at Alcalá de Henares, enter the words ‘Colegio Mayor San Ildefonso ant. pos.’. View the results of this search.

The following article can also be consulted:
Ana Santos Aramburo and Marta Torres Santo Domingo, ‘La Biblioteca Histórica de la Universidad Complutense: una primera aproximación a la historia de sus procedencias’, In La Memoria de los libros: Estudios sobre la historia del escrito y de la lectura en Europa y América, Salamanca, Instituto de Historia del Libro y de la Lectura, [2004], Tomo II, pp. 265-286.

A complete listing of provenance names is currently being compiled for the Biblioteca General Histórica of the Universidad de Salamanca. Each entry will give as much information as possible including biographical dates and activities, ownership marks and notes, as well as bookplates and bindings, all with digitized images and bibliographies. A description of the project and an alphabetical index of names (linked to the catalogue records) can be found on the project web site.

Former owners can also be searched on the online catalogue of the Fondo Histórico (books printed before 1831) of the University of Salamanca.

Use the following link to search the field Impresor, Editor, Antiguo posesor for records with names tagged “Ant. pos.” (former owner). E.g. search for “López, Blas” and then, to view the copy-specific data, click on the link under “NOTAS”. View the results for this search.

Information about the library’s history and holdings can be found in the “Historia” (history) section of the website.
The most recent article about this subject is:

Becedas González, Margarita y Óscar Lilao Franca, «La Biblioteca General Universitaria: evolución histórica y fondos». In: Luis Enrique Rodríguez-San Pedro Bezares, coord., Historia de la Universidad de Salamanca. III.2, Saberes y confluencias, Salamanca: Universidad, 2006, págs. 879-953.

Opera poetica Basiliensia : a database of poetic texts printed in Basel and/or held by the University Library in Basel. The left-hand menus have links to indexes of authors, titles, printing towns, printers, dates, and also provenance names (Vorbesitzer). The entries have digitised images of title pages, etc., many showing the provenance sources.
These names have now been added to the CERL Thesaurus.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/58558794@N07/collections/72157626385042757/: Images of Unidentified, partially identified, or identified bookplates, stamps, inscriptions, and bindings from their Special Collections material.