On the Upcoming Catalogue of Old Hungarian Books from the Collections of the Transylvanian Museum Society and the University Library of Cluj

The present paper presents the work-in-progress catalogue of old Hungarian books belonging to “Lucian Blaga” Central University Library of Cluj-Napoca (BCU Cluj): of this ongoing work, I present here the catalogue of the books printed between 1484-1630. The material is, therefore, organised chronologically, following the principles established in the first retrospective bibliography of old Hungarian books by Károly Szabó, the first librarian of the University Library in Cluj and of the Transylvanian Museum Society, whose (old) book collections are currently preserved at BCU Cluj, while for the copy-specific descriptions, I myself formulated a set of criteria. From the time span under scrutiny, I counted 425 titles in 522 volumes, a number which comprises the duplicates, but does not include all fragments of books – many of them still unidentified – that will be inserted in the catalogue after the processing of the entire collection of old Hungarian books. During the cataloguing process, I attached particular importance to provenance research. Beside the institutional provenance (Library of the Transylvanian Museum Society – University Library of Cluj), this also comprises previous book owners, since I consider that book history is inseparably connected to the history of their use, which can be uncovered only by identifying the former possessors. Such details bring significant contributions to intellectual history, revealing intellectual networks active in Transylvania between the 16^th and the 19^th centuries.

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