The bindings database includes systematically added descriptions and digital reproductions of historical bookbindings from the 14th to the 20th century, originating from the collections of the University Library in Poznań.

The bindings database

The provenance database includes descriptions and digital reproductions of ownership marks of former book owners whose works are now held in the collections of the University Library in Poznań. The database contains basic information about the owners of the books: personal and institutional (corporate) entries.

Provenances

The database of reconstructed historical book collections aims to virtually reunite dispersed historical collections recorded in old inventories and catalogues. The database includes the bibliographic identification of items listed in these old records and their current locations. The first historical collection reconstructed in this way is the library of the Jesuit College in Poznań.

The database of reconstructed historical book collections

The database of printed materials includes information on monographic and serial publications issued in the territory of Greater Poland between 1801 and 1953. Selected bibliographic records provide access to digitised copies of items held within the Regionalia collection of the Poznań University Library. To view these materials, users should click on the call number marked with the [ ] icon displayed in the description of a given bibliographic record. The database also contains information on the physical location of copies held in library collections. Items held by the Poznań University Library are identified by call numbers without letter prefixes. In other cases, the following designations may appear: P – PTPN Library BK – Kórnik Library BR – Raczyński Library BN – National Library of Poland The collected titles have been arranged into thematic sections reflecting the wide range of disciplines they represent, thereby illustrating the scope of publishing activity in Greater Poland from the early nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century: I. General Works, Occasional Publications II. Bibliology III. Music IV. Art V. Periodicals, Newspapers Va. Calendars. VI. Address books VII. Religious Works VIII. Sermons IX. Polish Prose X. Poetry and Drama XI. Classical Literature XII. Foreign Literature XIII. Linguistics XIV. Literary Studies XV. Medicine XVI. Veterinary Science XVII. Natural Sciences 1. General Works 2. Mathematics 3. Biology 4. Astronomy 5. Chemistry 6. Geology, Climate 7. Physics XVIII. Agriculture, Horticulture, Animal Husbandry, Crop Cultivation, Forestry XIX. Technology XX. Geography, Tourism, Regional Studies XXI. Freemasonry XXII. Biographies XXIII. History XXIV. Sources, Memoirs XXV. Pedagogy, Education, Textbooks, Psychology XXVI. Philosophy, Ethics XXVII. Economics, Economy, Trade XXVIII. Socio-Political Works XXIX. Law XXX. Acts, Statutes, Regulations XXXI. Reports XXXII. Sport

Bibliography of Greater Poland Prints

The database of anti-Jesuit writings from around the world, spanning the early modern period through the end of World War I (up to 1918) brings together literary, polemical, and ideological texts that express hostility toward the Society of Jesus, situating them within broader traditions of religious prejudice, political conspiracy, and cultural conflict. The database places texts from different regions in dialogue with one another—across Europe and the transatlantic world—offering a systematic, comparative framework for analyzing genres, tropes, historical contexts, and political agendas, as well as both shared patterns and local specificities of anti-Jesuitism across time and place.

Anti-Jesuit literature

The manuscripts of the University Library in Poznań are very diverse in terms of chronology (10th–21st centuries), subject matter and provenance. The collection contains many valuable artifacts and source materials, particularly from the Wielkopolska region. The diversity of its holdings reflects the Library's history, from its founding in 1901 as the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Bibliothek, its renaming in 1919 as the Poznań University Library, and the Polonization of the collection in the interwar period, to the period of the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek (1939-1945) and the campaign to secure book collections that survived World War II (1945-1950). The collection includes 45 codices – medieval manuscripts (13th century - first half of the 16th century), mostly from church collections in Greater Poland, primarily monasteries (as of 2016 included in the National Library Resources). In addition to the codices, the medieval manuscripts also include two documents (legal acts) from the 15th century and nearly 30 fragments, mainly parchment, of manuscripts from the 10th-15th centuries, which include many valuable relics of medieval European writing. As part of the post-war campaign to secure surviving book collections, the Library received manuscripts from Greater Poland manor libraries and landowner archives, both Polish (the Skórzewskis from Czerniejewo-Radomice and Lubostroń, the Mielżyńskis from Pawłowice and Chobienice, the Mycielskis from Kobylepole, the Kościelskis from Miłosław and the Żółtowskis from Niechanów, the Pawłowskis from Grudzielec, the Radolińskis from Jarocin and the Trąmpczyńskis from Dębłów near Gniezno) and formerly German (among others. the von Massenbach family from Białokosze, the Stolberg-Wernigerode family from Borzęciczki near Krotoszyn, the Maltzan family from Milicz, Baron Joachim von Loesch from Jabłonna near Rydzyna, as well as part of the archives and book collections of the Baltendeutsch (Baltic Germans) and the archives and collections of Masonic lodges from all over Europe collected by Himmler). Another group of manuscripts consists of the archives of Polish and German institutions and associations, primarily those in Greater Poland, including the Historische Gesellschaft für die Provinz Posen (1885-1945) and the Historische Gesellschaft in Polen (1919-1939), the records of the Trade Union of Polish Writers in Poznań (from 1921-1933), the Polish-Italian Society in Poznań (1932-1934), and the archives of the Polish School Museum in Lviv. A separate manuscript category comprises the legacies (or fragments thereof) of famous social activists, writers, composers, musicians, musicologists, and professors of Poznań universities. A significant portion of the manuscript collection consists of memoirs, primarily wartime ones – written by participants and witnesses of the events: the Greater Poland Uprising (over 200 works from 1968), as well as occupation-era memoirs by students of the Faculty of Law and Economics at the University of Poznań, the Poznań Academy of Economics, and the Szczecin Academy of Economics (nearly 1,800). A significant part of the manuscript collection is the Stammbuch collection comprising books of friendship (Latin: alba amicorum, also known as memory books) from the 17th to the 20th centuries.

Manuscripts

The collection of early prints includes systematically added descriptions and digital reproductions of books printed from the 15th to the 18th century (incunabula and early printed books) from the collections of the University Library in Poznań. More: https://lib.amu.edu.pl/pracownia-starych-drukow/ The collection of old prints comprises nearly 65,000 works in more than 75,000 volumes, as well as 450 incunabula (including fragmentarily preserved copies). It is one of the largest collections of this type in the country. It is dominated by foreign prints, mainly from German and French printing houses (dating from16th–18th centuries and 18th century respectively). Polish imprints from the 16th–18th centuries constitute about 15% of the entire collection. In terms of provenance, the collection consists largely of the remnants of old Greater Poland book collections and forms an invaluable document of the region’s history. However, it also contains remnants of libraries from Western Pomerania, Courland, and Semigallia (including libraries of the Baltic Germans), as well as fragments of many former book collections from the territory of the historical German Reich.

Early prints

The iconographic materials collected at the University Library in Poznań primarily include imagery related to the history of Poznań and Greater Poland: places, events, and individuals associated with the region’s history. The iconographic collections consist of photography (including original glass negatives and positive prints from the 19th–20th centuries) and graphic works (albums and portfolios from the 19th–20th centuries, prints and ephemeral publications from the 15th–20th centuries, including postcards depicting Poznań and Greater Poland among others).

Iconography

Cartographic Collections of the University Library in Poznań – Collection Overview The cartographic collections of the University Library in Poznań constitute a unique scientific and cultural heritage, documenting the spatial changes in Poznań, Greater Poland, and Europe from the 17th century to the present day. The collection includes a variety of materials, from precise urban plans, regional and national maps, to atlases, vedute, and old guidebooks. Together, they form a multidimensional narrative of spatial development, both in geometric and cultural terms. The sharing of collections within the Mirabilium Collectio platform aims not only to protect and digitize this valuable heritage, but also to facilitate access to the resources to a wide audience through digital tools that enable the analysis, comparison, and exploration of historical representations of space, which are also available in the historical geoportal.

Cartography

The collection of musicalia comprises around one thousand music manuscripts and several tens of thousands of music prints, including just over one thousand of those published in the first half of the 19th century. The musicalia collection at the University Library in Poznań was established in the 1950s, with the vast majority of its most valuable items acquired in the 1970s and 1980s. One of the few exceptions is the collection of musicalia from the Maltzan family estate in Milicz. It consists of 36 manuscripts and four prints, which found their way to the Library as the result of the post–World War II book securing campaign conducted in Poznań. This collection constitutes an exceptionally valuable testimony to the vibrant musical life of 19th century Milicz, as well as a source of original repertoire for the viola da gamba—a musical instrument already falling out of use at that time. The collection gained international recognition with the discovery of previously unknown works by the renowned 18th century composer Carl Friedrich Abel which enriched the catalogue of his compositions.

Musicalia

The collections of the Social Life Documents Workshop comprise various documents, differing in form and content, of informational, normative, advertising, and propaganda nature. The Workshop specializes primarily in gathering materials related to the history and contemporary life of Greater Poland: all kinds of ephemeral prints reflecting the activities of its inhabitants in economic, political, and cultural fields. Various forms of documents are collected: ephemeral prints such as invitations, posters and placards, informational leaflets, tickets, admission cards, vouchers, shares and bonds; printed matter (brochures, folders, one-day publications, periodicals), iconographic documents (photographs, postcards, stamps, stickers), as well as artifacts (medals, pins, and gadgets). The collections constitute a valuable source for research on the Greater Poland region in the broadly understood fields of social and historical sciences. The structure of the collections includes a regional resource of retrospective prints (dating from 1752 to 1948, including materials published outside the region) and contemporary prints (from 1949 to the present), as well as a library of regional periodicals and books. The most numerous thematic collections include patriotic telegrams dating from 1895 to 1954, materials concerning the period of the Polish People’s Republic, émigré books and periodicals and underground publications, legal acts (regulations and statutes of various organizations, unions, and associations dating from 1801 to 1989), funeral prints (funeral speeches, obituaries, and commemorative cards), 19th- and 20th-century theatre, film, and advertising posters and placards, as well as prints concerning the Targowica Confederation and the Second Partition of Poland and the Kościuszko Uprising dating from 1792 to 1794, from the collections of Władysław Reymont.

Documents of social life

The Poznań collection of Masonic prints is one of the largest collections of Masonic materials in Europe. It was transferred to the University Library after World War II from the town of Sława in Lower Silesia. This book collection consists of fragments from various, mainly German, lodge libraries, comprising largely of prints from the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Masonica

Monographic and serial publications issued after 1801 in Greater Poland under the Prussian rule. Diverse in subject matter and language and addressed to a broad readership, they provide insight into the development of publishing services in the region.

Regional publications

The Archive of the University Library in Poznań has been operating since 1982. Its holdings include documents ranging from Prussian records related to the activities of the Kaiser Wilhelm Library (Kaiser-Wilhelm-Bibliothek) and the Landesbibliothek, to materials from the interwar period and the German occupation, up to postwar documentation in the form of minutes, reports, accounts, photographs, and international correspondence.

BUP Archive

The Comic Book Collection of the University Library in Poznań was established in 2008. Since then, the library has been collecting, providing access to, conducting scholarly and source-based research on comics, as well as promoting and educating in the broadly understood field of comic art and culture. The materials collected on the platform constitute the basis for most of the activities undertaken by the Library in connection with the presence of comics at the University Library in Poznań (BUP) and have been grouped into three segments: · Polish Bibliography of Comic Knowledge · Comic Chronicles of Greater Poland · BUP Comics Catalogue