Koltay Klára
The old book collection of the Debrecen University Library and its present state of availability
The Debrecen University Library is a relatively young institution; it was founded in 1916 and first opened its gates in 1918. It's less than a hundred years' existence does not predestine it to have an old book collection of any significance. Still, owing to its dedicated librarians, who from the 1930's placed a special emphasis on enlarging this section of the collection, as well, it today houses 20.000 books printed before 1850 both in Hungary and abroad.
In the first decades the old books got into the library as part of donated or purchased private collections. Just to mention a few of the important libraries I have to make note of the duplicate library of Baron Béla Radvánszky (1849-1906) from Sajókaza, which has belonged to the Debrecen University Library since 19181, the books of the Révész family, which got into Debrecen in the 1930s2, and the several hundred books from the Büdszentmihály library of Count József Dessewffy (1771-1843)3. The old book collection was considerably enlarged by dr. Lajos Bertók4, who having been an antiquarian bookseller became the head of the library's acquisition department in 1951 and by his successor, dr. Olga Gomba, who followed him in the job in 1970. The books acquired during these decades rarely arrived in big coherent collections5, but there are some possessors, whose names appear in more than one book6.
The arrangement of the old books follows two different patterns: the private libraries from the very first to the recent ones are always kept together and are integrated into the whole collection more or less in one unit. It is especially true for the oldest part of the collection which this way contains approximately 8000 thousand volumes printed before 1850 scattered among the general holdings of the time. On the other hand a Rare Book Collection was established in the 1970s initiated by Olga Gomba, which in a separate range of call numbers stores 2000 volumes printed before 1800 and another 10000 from the first half the 19 th century7.
The rare books holding of Debrecen University Library is fully catalogued and the cards are entered in the library's main author-title catalogue which again makes it difficult to give a comprehensive picture of the whole collection. The descriptions are short with uniform names and often but not always with UDC strings referring the works to the class of antiquarian books subdivided by country and/or language and time. The UDC numbers, however, do not describe the exact content of the works. This section of the UDC catalogue offers another access point to a great number though not all the rare books of the library.
In 1969 there started a research program of the marginal and possessorial notes of the collection8. The program though with varying intensity has been going on since then and has resulted in bibliographic volumes describing the foreign part of the collection with their possessorial notes9, publications in Könyv és könyvtár, the library's yearbook10 and in some other journals11 on some of the most interesting findings and handwritten notes12.
The library's online catalogue contains relatively few old book descriptions; only those books are entered here that has had to be catalogued since the library's card files were closed. The records are in USMARC format and they are authority controlled which makes it possible for us to build name authority files. It is especially important in the case of personal and geographical names of the rare book collections.
When our cataloguing conventions were created we took those of the Szeged University Library into consideration as well as the national standards on the one hand and adapted ourselves to the general structure of our online catalogue on the other hand. Following this structure, which considers the record to be the description of a manifestation of the work with attached copy specific data in some item level fields is especially challenging in the case of old books. The item level fields of our catalogue are meant to carry only a few information from call numbers to location and circulation codes used in the case of modern material but do not give much room for all those copy specific details one wants to record when processing old books. The solution we chose accepts that the role of the bibliographic record is to describe the manifestation of the work (that is we do not create separate records for various copies of a document) and adapts itself to the present situation that whatever is to be described about the individual copies has to be done within the bibliographic record. It, however, does not mean that we restrict ourselves only to the information that our item field can code. Our descriptions contain "item level notes" in the body of the description, only we try to be systematic about marking which copy they belong to. We hope that this way we can create records which are rich in item specific content and unite the data of our catalogue cards with those of the findings of all previous research into possessors of the books and which can be the raw material of a future database where separate bibliographic and item records gives a more coherent and ordered structure to the same data.
The record below, which in some of its elements fictitious gives an example of how the above considerations manifest themselves in the catalogue. Among the authority controlled names it is not only the authors that appear but the possessors and printers as well. The latter ones are present together with their functions in subfields $e. The geographical names are given their authorized form in field 752, (which unfortunately is not authority controlled in our system), and if relevant in subject fields as well. The general item information is present in 949 fields (one field for each copy), while notes belonging to them (most often possessors in 561, binding information in 595, the condition of the copy in 595) are in the body of the description with subfield $5 containing the link information to the relevant 949.
000 00893aam 00229 i
001 bibJAT00008399
005 19970716090618.0
008 960719s1681 lat d
040 $dHuDeKLEK
080 $a094.1(439)"1681"
100 1 $aBársony György$c(Lovasberényi)$d(1626-1678)
245 10 $aVeritas toti mundo declarata; sacram caesaream regiámque majestatem non obligari ad tolerandos in Ungaria Lutheranos, et Calvinistas /$cauthore ...Georgio Barsony
260 $a[Nagyszombat] :$bTyp. Acad. per Joan. Andr. Hörmann,$c1681
300 $a152 p. ;$c16 cm
561 $aKézírásos possessori bejegyzések$5D1 (753.844)
510 0 $aRMK$cII. 1493.
583 $xKS
596 $bcsonka: g ív/345-467. p. hiányzik$5D1, (753.917)
595 $iKötés :$apergamen$ccsatokkal$d17. század $5D1 (753.844)
650 4 $aRitka könyvek$zSzlovákia$zTrnava
650 0 $aRare books$zSlovakia$zTyrnavia.
695 $avallási vitairat$xkatolikus
700 1 $aMunkátsi István Pál$e(possessor)
700 1 $aHörman, János András$e(nyomdász)
700 1 $aEsterházy József$c(Galántai)$d(1760-1839 körül)$e(possessor)
710 2 $aTypographia Academica (Nagyszombat)
752 $dTrnava (Szlovákia)
949 $a753.844$lD1$n6.683/1997$trm$z9990000000064640
949 $a753.917$lD1$n6.888/1932$trm$z9990000000063210
The digitization project of the Debrecen University Library concerning its old books, similarly to their electronic cataloguing program, is technically founded, has its first fruits and are planned to be carried out in larger scale in the near future. It fits into the framework of its digital library (http://fulltext.lib.unideb.hu), which stores the digitized material in picture files and provides bibliographic descriptions as a tool of retrieval. When the digitized material is a periodical the descriptions are on the article level and stored in a special database. In the case of old books the descriptions are those in the library catalogue, which carry a link to the digitized books in it 856 fields as in the record below:
000 00376cam 22001457 4504
001 bibFSZ00358023
005 20020301134240.0
008 s1839 hu ger d
035 $ab407105
040 $aHuBpFSZEK$dHuDeKLEK
080 $a798.4$a894.511-92"182/187"
100 1 $aSzéchenyi István$d(1791-1860)
245 00 $aEiniges über Ungarn. Nach dem "Néhány szó a' lóverseny körül." /$cGrafen Stephan Széchenyi
260 $a[ Pest ] :$b[Heckenast],$c1839
300 $a240 l;$c21 cm
583 $xpeto$xcsga
650 4 $aLóverseny$xtörténet
650 0 $aHorse racing$xHistory.
856 41 $3A DEENK 779.393 helyrajzi számú példányának digitális másolata$uhttp://fulltext.lib.unideb.hu/journals/bin/tibi.cgi?fi=szec&ev=1&sz=Einiges
949 $a779.393$lD1$n876/1955
949 $a779.392$lD1$n879/1955
949 $a756.056$lD1$n1051/1952
The description with the help of the 856 field leads the readers to a webpage, where the picture files themselves are accessible and the pages can be leafed through. There are a series of small size pictures to help the quick navigation within the volume.
At the moment there are four volumes to found the electronic rare book collection of the library, (http://fulltext.lib.unideb.hu/konyvek.php3) while some periodicals from the first half of the 19 th century belong to the electronic periodical collection. (http://fulltext.lib.unideb.hu/eszak-tisza.php3)
The selection of the material to be entered into the electronic rare book collection follows two principles: the library intends to presents its carefully selected most valuable books on the Web, while on the other hand it relies on its readers' requests, placing all material in the collection the electronic copy of which have been requested. Most of what is already available online were requested by our patrons, while the digitization of the books belonging to the first category is just taking place.
A page of the Széchényi work quoted int the description above.