Humanities and Social Sciences

Libri Gedanenses

Description

Libri Gedanenses is a scientific publication of the Gdańsk PAS Library, a journal constituting a forum for the presentation of the collections of the Gdańsk bookery. Issued since 1968, the annual was created by dr Marian Pelczar, a long-standing head of the Library. The scientific activity of the Gdansk PAS Library is directed at the exploration of the Gdansk, Polish, and European world of the book: https://bgpan.gda.pl/

Libri Gedanenses presents the achievements both of the employees of the Library and authors from other scientific centres, in line with its profile adopted by its Programme Board. The journal publishes texts in both Polish and English.

ISSN

ISSN 0075-9163, e-ISSN 3071-6594

Publishers

Polska Akademia Nauk, Biblioteka Gdańska

Programme Board

prof. dr hab. Krzysztof Migoń
University of Wrocław, prof. em.

dr Maria Pelczar
former director of the Gdańsk Library of PAS

prof. dr Guido Vannini
Università degli Studi di Firenze, prof. em.
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7903-3961

Editorial Board

dr Aleksander Baliński (editor-in-chief)
Gdańsk PAS Library
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5774-6637

Wanda Pętlicka (secretary)
Gdańsk PAS Library

dr Zofia Tylewska-Ostrowska
Gdańsk PAS Library
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8497-9823

dr Anna Walczak (head)
Director of Gdańsk PAS Library

Libri Gedanenses
PAN Biblioteka Gdańska
80-858 Gdańsk,
ul. Wałowa 15
libri@bg.pan.pl

The journal Libri Gedanenses is indexed in EBSCO databases EBSCO and is available in the Library and Information Science Source database.

Volumes
Instructions for authors
Additional info
Publication Ethics Policy
Peer-review Procedure
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Content

Libri Gedanenses | 2018 | vol. 35

1 Front pages

Libri Gedanenses | 2018 | vol. 35

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2 [Preface]

Anna Walczak

Libri Gedanenses | 2018 | vol. 35

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Authors and Affiliations

Anna Walczak

3 Danziger Stadtbibliothek in the period 1905–1945

Dagmara Binkowska

Libri Gedanenses | 2018 | vol. 35 | 7-39

Keywords: Danziger Stadtbibliothek Municipal Library in Gdansk Free City of Danzig (Gdansk) Otto Günther (1864–1924) Friedrich Schwarz (1875–1968) Hermann Hassbargen (1893–1955)

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Abstract

1905 was a milestone year for the Gdansk Municipal Library – its collections were relocated for the very first time in their history to a building erected especially for the purpose, and the entire institution stepped into the 20th century and the world of modern librarianship: a planned collection, scientific cataloguing and indexing, and streamlined circulation. The article presents the specific nature of work at the Library as a Prussian and German facility, as an institution of the Free City of Danzig (Gdansk) and during the two world wars, and shows how it changed over the period of forty years under the supervision of its subsequent directors – Otton Günther, Friedrich Schwarz, and Hermann Hassbargen. In 1945 the century-and-a-half long period of the history of the Gdansk Library as Danziger Stadtbibliothek, the successor of Bibliotheca Senatus Gedanensis and the predecessor of the Gdansk PAS Library, came to an end.

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Authors and Affiliations

Dagmara Binkowska

PAN Biblioteka Gdańska, Dział Druków XIX i 1. poł. XX wieku

4 Municipal Library in Gdansk between 1945 and 1954

Maria Pelczar

Libri Gedanenses | 2018 | vol. 35 | 41-89

Keywords: Municipal Library in Gdansk Gdansk – history of library collections replevin of library collections Marian Pelczar (1905–1983) “Gdansk Library”

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Abstract

On 9 April 1945, Polish authorities officially took over one of the most valuable library holdings in Europe collected at the Danziger Stadtbibliothek (previously Bibliotheca Senatus Gedanensis). The most important tasks included the protection of the building and the bringing back of the most valuable items which towards the end of the war were taken away from Gdansk. They were found in the cellars of the Old Town Hall, in the Malbork Castle, and in the Pelplin Seminary.
The team of devoted librarians headed by dr. Marian Pelczar, director, spent the first year of their work on the tidying of the interior of the building, cleaning and shelving the relocated book collections and safeguarding the abandoned libraries in Gdansk and in its vicinity. Despite the extremely difficult conditions, it was as early as on 22 June 1946 that the readers and Polish science were provided with access to the Library’s resources which, in particular as regards Polonica, to that date were little known to scholars, not only Polish ones.
The tasks of the reborn Municipal Library were determined in its Organisational Charter adopted by the College of the City Board on 25 April 1946. The facility had a double nature: it functioned both as an educational library (the centre of a network of public reading rooms and libraries) and a scientific library (which included an information and bibliography centre). These two directions of activity determined the history of the Library until the end of 1954, when its scientific department was taken over by the Polish Academy of Sciences, and the educational one was merged with the Provincial Library.

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Authors and Affiliations

Maria Pelczar

5 The Gdansk Library of the Polish Academy of Sciences between 1955 and 1996

Helena Dzienis

Libri Gedanenses | 2018 | vol. 35 | 91-129

Keywords: Gdansk Library Polish Academy of Sciences Gdansk – libraries

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Abstract

The article attempts to present the functioning of the Gdansk Library under the patronage of the Polish Academy of Sciences. As of 1 January 1955, the scientific department of the Municipal Library in Gdansk was taken over by the Polish Academy of Sciences, and the thus established separate institution received new statutes regulating the activity of the Library and the scope of the development of its collections. Until the four-hundredth anniversary of the Gdansk Library (the establishment of Bibliotheca Senatus Gedanensis), descriptions of the history of the Gdansk PAS Library were mainly based on reports drawn up by the heads of the institution. It is on their basis that one may trace the difficult space and storage and warehouse conditions in which employees of the Library carried out their statutory tasks, with the constantly growing collections and the increasing load of services. The paper also reports the scientific works of employees of the Library as well as the editorial activity of the institution, including works documenting the collections of the Library. An important way of familiarising the general public with knowledge on the Gdansk Library and its collections was through exhibitions and displays organized by employees of the information and special collections departments.

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Authors and Affiliations

Helena Dzienis

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ORCID:

PAN Biblioteka Gdańska, Dział Zbiorów Specjalnych, Pracownia Numizmatów i Ekslibrisów

6 A Library as a cure for the soul and the body. 15th century medical printed matters in the collections of the Gdansk Library

Beata Gryzio

Libri Gedanenses | 2018 | vol. 35 | 131-145

Keywords: collections of medical books Gdansk – church libraries Gdansk Library history of medicine medical incunabula

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Abstract

The article presents a selection of 15th century printed matters on the topic of broadly understood medicine, which are currently kept by the Gdansk PAS Library. They testify to the Gdansk culture in the area of the knowledge on health and hygiene in the 15th century and in a slightly later period. The majority of the said printed matters originate from the collections of Gdansk church libraries, while the presence of items of other origin (private owners) makes it possible to trace the road medical incunabula came to Gdansk to finally find their way to the resources of the Gdansk library.
The author of the article explains the modesty of the Gdansk medical literature resources with the fact that there was not a single university functioning in the city by the River Motlawa in the early modern period. The presence of this kind of incunabula in church libraries and private collections of books indicates that the knowledge they contained was applied for personal use rather than in professional medical practice, although some of the items in question originate from book collections belonging to doctors.

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Authors and Affiliations

Beata Gryzio

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PAN Biblioteka Gdańska, Dział Zbiorów Specjalnych, Pracownia Starych Druków

7 A 1687 engraving presenting a view of the interior of the Library of the Council of the City of Gdansk as a contribution to the discussion on the beginnings of the Gdansk Library

Krystyna Jackowska

Libri Gedanenses | 2018 | vol. 35 | 147-167

Keywords: Library of the Council of the City of Gdansk view of the interior of the Library of the Council of the City Andreas Stech (1635–1697) image of science in the eyes of the authorities of Gdansk

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Abstract

The engraving presenting a view of the interior of the Library of the Council of the City of Gdansk was made in 1687 – just like the other 56 engravings showing the city in Reinhold Curicke’s work Der Stadt Dantzig historische Beschreibung (Amsterdam and Gdansk 1687). The author of the article analysed the view in terms of its style, technique and iconography. Reaching back to 1596, she presented the circumstances in which the Library of the Council of the City of Gdansk was established in its initial location, referring to the political situation in the Commonwealth after Sigismund III Vasa, a supporter of the counter-reformation directed at the Protestant Gdansk, ascended to the throne. Analysing the artistic value of the view on the interior of the Library, the author accentuated the appropriate decorum, differentiating the engraving in question from Curicke’s other illustrations forming a part of his work. According to the author, the above resulted from the fact that the city authorities wanted to highlight the role of child-rearing, education and science in the development of Gdansk. The message was expressed in a baroquising style allegorizing the image of science. It is this intention which makes the view of the interior of the Library different from the other realistic views of the structures, fragments of the city and suburban areas of Gdansk.

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Authors and Affiliations

Krystyna Jackowska

PAN Biblioteka Gdańska, Dział Zbiorów Specjalnych, Pracownia Grafiki

8 Ex Bibliotheca Fidalkiana. Bibles in Johann Fidalke’s collections

Maria Otto-Michalska

Libri Gedanenses | 2018 | vol. 35 | 169-189

Keywords: Bibles bibliophilia Johann Fidalke (1703–1763) auction catalogues Gdansk – book collections provenance

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Abstract

Johann Fidalke (1703–1763), a Gdansk pastor and a gymnasium teacher, gathered a substantial collection of books comprising more than 10,000 volumes. After his death, the books were sold during four auctions, and the valuable collection was dispersed. However, owing to an auction catalogue kept in the collections of the Gdansk PAS Library, we may recreate the content of the Gdansk pastor’s collection. Its most considerable part was made up of different editions of the Holy Bible – with a total of 95 editions in 156 volumes. The article provides a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the said Bibles, focusing on the presentation of their languages as well as the places and times of their publication, and their bindings. The article is accompanied by an index, in which the different editions of the Bible in Fidalke’s collection are identified and catalogued in line with the contemporary standards, on the basis of the rudimentary information given in the auction catalogue.

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Authors and Affiliations

Maria Otto-Michalska

PAN Biblioteka Gdańska, Dział Zbiorów Specjalnych, Pracownia Starych Druków

9 Photographs documenting changes in the public space during the levelling of Gdansk’s north-east fortifications at the beginning of the 20th century

Marta Pawlik-Flisikowska

Libri Gedanenses | 2018 | vol. 35 | 191-207

Keywords: photography glass negatives Gdansk – city fortifications levelling of defensive ramparts Knipawa (Rudno) Ernst Loops (1891–1974)

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Abstract

The article presents a collection of 174 glass negatives kept by the Gdansk PAN Library, displaying photographic documentation of the removal of defensive ramparts in the north-east parts of Gdansk between 1908 and 1928. The text is an attempt at the recreation of the history of this unique collection – the circumstances of its origin and its fate both before and after the Second World War. Arranging the collection in chronological order, the author follows the footprints of an anonymous photographer, recreating the old picture of the ramparts, water courses and sluices in the eastern part of the city, and recording the changes which affected the space of the suburban district of Knipawa (Rudno) and the settlement Althof. On the basis of the photographs, she decodes the places from which the photographs were taken, which is often down to traces left by their unknown author; she also offers a thesis concerning the identity of the photographer.

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Authors and Affiliations

Marta Pawlik-Flisikowska

PAN Biblioteka Gdańska, Dział Zbiorów Specjalnych, Pracownia Fotografii

10 Teresa Ferenc and Zbigniew Jankowski’s archives in the collection of the Gdansk Library

Sabina Drożdziecka

Libri Gedanenses | 2018 | vol. 35 | 209-231

Keywords: Teresa Ferenc (1934) Zbigniew Jankowski (1931) Polish poets of the 20th century Gdansk Library Pomerania – literature

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Abstract

Since 1987, the poets Teresa Ferenc and Zbigniew Jankowski have been gradually donating their substantial archives containing personal documents, diplomas and honourable mentions, photographs, hand-written versions of their published works, notes with ideas concerning changes to their works, correspondence, and press cuttings from the period between the 1940s until the beginning of the 21st century, to the collections of the Gdansk PAN Library. At the moment, the Manuscripts Workshop keeps about 600 manuscript accession units; the most recent materials date to 2016.
The extensive correspondence of both poets may become a source material for research into the history of Polish literature in Pomerania in the second half of the 20th century. It makes up one of the most sizeable epistolary materials in the letter collections kept by the Library. Among the correspondents of the Sopot poets there are names who have found a perpetual place in the canon of Polish literature, such as Anna Kamieńska, Tadeusz Różewicz, Wisława Szymborska and Fr. Jan Twardowski.

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Authors and Affiliations

Sabina Drożdziecka

PAN Biblioteka Gdańska, Dział Zbiorów Specjalnych, Pracownia Rękopisów

11 The Annual Report of the Gdansk PAS Library (2017)

Zofia Tylewska-Ostrowska

Libri Gedanenses | 2018 | vol. 35 | 233-250

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Authors and Affiliations

Zofia Tylewska-Ostrowska

e-mail:

ORCID:

12 Bibliography of publications of employees of the Gdansk Library for 2009–2017

Beata Meller

Libri Gedanenses | 2018 | vol. 35 | 251-273

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Authors and Affiliations

Beata Meller

13 Bibliografia zawartości Libri Gedanenses. Tomy I–XXXV (1968–2018)

Aleksander Baliński

Libri Gedanenses | 2018 | vol. 35 | 275-292

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Authors and Affiliations

Aleksander Baliński

14 Spis treści / Table of contents / Inhaltsverzeichnis

Libri Gedanenses | 2018 | vol. 35

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15 Autorzy XXXV tomu „Libri Gedanenses”

Libri Gedanenses | 2018 | vol. 35

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Instructions for authors

Instructions for authors

Information for authors

Decisions on whether any given text shall be published are taken by the Editors of Libri Gedanenses. After receiving positive reviews, they also decide on the placement of submissions in one of the following sections: ‘papers and announcements’, ‘materials’, ‘essays’, or ‘reviews and polemics’. The Editors do not accept materials which are inconsistent with the editorial guidelines and reserve the right to introduce changes and shorten texts, as well as to select illustrations in consultation with Authors. The submitted materials are not returned.
Authors transfer to Gdańsk PAS Library the copyright and related rights to the published texts in all currently known areas of exploitation, including the ones specified in Art. 50 of the Act of 4 February 1994 on Copyright and Related Rights, in particular: copying and reproducing by print or digital technique, putting copies into circulation, and disseminating them in digital form.

Libri Gedanenses does not pay fees to authors. Authors receive one copy of the annual and a digital version of their publication (pdf).

Editorial guidelines

The Editors of Libri Gedanenses kindly ask Authors to comply with the guidelines concerning the preparation and submission of texts and illustrations for publication that are presented below. Authors are required to specify their academic/professional title/degree, current place of work, and their e-mail address – or, if necessary, address for correspondence.
Texts should be prepared in WORD in the RTF format. Papers should not have more than 48,000 characters (spaces inclusive), and reviews no more than 12,000 characters (spaces inclusive). Text formatting: font Times New Roman 12, line spacing 1.5 points; formatting of footnotes: font Times New Roman 10, line spacing 1.5 points. Footnotes and bibliographies should be modelled on the ones published in the journal. An abstract of 800-1200 characters (spaces inclusive) and 5-7 keywords should be provided with every text.
Illustrations should be made in the TIFF format, 600 dpi. Every list of illustrations must contain information on who are the authors of scans/photos and copyright owners.
Texts and illustrations should be submitted in the digital form to libri@bg.pan.pl (or, exceptionally, on a CD/DVD by post to: Libri Gedanenses, PAN Biblioteka Gdańska, 80-858 Gdańsk, ul. Wałowa 15).

Additional info

Archival issues

Bibliography of the contents of Libri Gedanenses volumes 1-35 (1968-2018) is available at https://bgpan.gda.pl/o-bibliotece/libri-gedanenses/

Publication Ethics Policy

Publication ethics

The publication ethics of Libri Gedanenses are consistent with the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics https://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf

The Editorial Board evaluates the submitted works in terms of their contents without regard to the authors. All the submitted materials remain confidential. They are only available to editors, reviewers and, in some cases, the editors’ advisors. Reviews are confidential also.

Libri Gedanenses publishes only original texts. The Editors expect authors to maintain scientific reliability and respect publication standards, with particular regard to quoting the results of other authors’ works. It is assumed that authors had read the works they refer to.

All persons who contributed a significant input into the development of the work should be mentioned as co-authors. The first author mentioned should submit the final text to the journal after it has been approved as the version for publication by all other co-authors.

The Editorial Board is entitled to reject the work if it is guilty of plagiarism, if the text has already been published, or if the presented research results turn out to be unreliable due to the author’s conscious activity or their involuntary error.

Peer-review Procedure

Reviewing procedure

Preliminary decisions on the rejection or acceptance of the works submitted for reviewing are taken by the Editorial Board of Libri Gedanenses. The basic evaluation criteria include the consistence of the topic with the journal’s profile, the text’s scientific value, its logical organization and linguistic form. The accepted materials are edited in agreement with the authors.

The papers undergo a double blind review process. Each of them is reviewed by two reviewers selected in a manner excluding a conflict of interests with the author. Reviewers recommend that the reviewed papers be accepted, suggesting the introduction of corrections, or that they be rejected. Reviews are made in writing and are completed with a clear evaluation of a given work under review. It is on their basis that the final decisions are taken by the Editorial Board.

Non-scientific texts – such as reviews, polemics, obituaries and reports – are in principle not reviewed, although they may be referred for a review.

A full list of reviewers is given in the appropriate volume of the journal.

Reviewers

Tom 40 (2023)

dr hab. Bogdan Burliga (Uniwersytet Gdański)
dr hab. Sławomir Kościelak (Uniwersytet Gdański)
prof. dr hab. Krzysztof Lewalski (Uniwersytet Gdański)
dr hab. Gabriela Majewska (Uniwersytet Gdański)
prof. dr hab. Mieczysław Nurek
dr hab. Iwona Sakowicz-Tebinka (Uniwersytet Gdański)
dr hab. Marek Stażewski
prof. dr hab. Tadeusz Stegner (Uniwersytet Gdański)
prof. dr hab. Jacek Tebinka (Uniwersytet Gdański)
dr Anna Żeglińska (Uniwersytet Gdański)

Tom 39 (2022)

dr Zbigniew I. Brzostowski (Akademia Sztuk Pięknych w Gdańsku)
dr hab. Bogdan Burliga (Uniwersytet Gdański)
dr hab. Karol Łopatecki (Uniwersytet w Białymstoku)
dr Anna Łysiak-Łątkowska (Uniwersytet Gdański)
dr hab. Gabriela Majewska (Uniwersytet Gdański)
dr hab. Radosław Skrycki (Uniwersytet Szczeciński)
dr hab. Iwona Sakowicz-Tebinka (Uniwersytet Gdański)

Tom 38 (2021)

dr Zbigniew I. Brzostowski (Akademia Sztuk Pięknych w Gdańsku)
dr hab. Bogdan Burliga (Uniwersytet Gdański)
dr Anna Łysiak-Łątkowska (Uniwersytet Gdański)
dr hab. Gabriela Majewska (Uniwersytet Gdański)
dr hab. Iwona Sakowicz-Tebinka (Uniwersytet Gdański)
dr hab. Andrzej Woziński (Uniwersytet Gdański)