Höslinger-Finck Annette

Shared Heritage – Re-Cataloguing "Ruthenian" Titles at the Austrian National Library

Section: Ukraine and Austria: science, education, and culture in the modern information space

Abstract: The purpose of the paper is to present the re-cataloguing of the "Ruthenica" collection at the Austrian National Library. These East Slavic printed works in Cyrillic script were delivered from the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria to the Imperial and Royal Court Library in Vienna between 1772 and 1918. Due to their diversity of text types, they represent important sources for research into the history of Galicia’s intertwined culture as part of the Habsburg Monarchy and serve as witnesses of our shared European cultural heritage. The research methodology is basedon analyzing the historical and legal prerequisites why these works were delivered to Vienna. Further processing in the framework of changing cataloguing rules and technological progress from the early 19th century until nowis examined, different catalogue solutions are compared. The scientific novelty lies in direct application of latest scientific expertise and specialist library knowledge by finding a solution for cataloguing Ruthenian resources that allows higher discoverability and accessibility, thus contributing to the development of metadata standards fornon-Latin script resources. Conclusions. Since "Ruthenian" in the Habsburg Monarchy lacked a uniform language standard, the titles of the "Ruthenica" collection were inconsistently transcribed and difficult to find in the catalogue. Given bibliographic data management standards based on international regulations, transliteration standards and interoperability of machine-processable data, re-cataloguing these historical resources presented a particular challenge. In collaboration with specialized librarians and scholars, an innovative guideline was developed that combines the latest findings in academic Slavic studies with the requirements of modern metadata management. The newly described titles are significantly easier to find, meet modern metadata standards and can be accessed as a collection. A next step will involve further research using machine learning methods to gain new scientific insights.

Keywords: Ruthenian language, historical resources, bibliographic data management, transliteration standards, resource discoverability, machine learning.

  Full-text PDF    https://doi.org/10.15407/bv2025.02.024     Citation

• Höslinger-Finck Annette (Austrian National Library (Vienna, Austria), [email protected]) ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-5644-8954

Cite:
Höslinger-Finck Annette (2025). Shared Heritage – Re-Cataloguing "Ruthenian" Titles at the Austrian National Library. Bibliotechnyi visnyk, (2) 24-36. doi: https://doi.org/10.15407/bv2025.02.024

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