Old stock

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In librarianship, the old inventory refers to the valuable historical inventory of a library . As a rule, it requires special protection in order to maintain it and is therefore often only accessible to a limited extent and is stored permanently. Old holdings are therefore considered to be cultural assets (French: patrimoine ) that are thought to be inalienable.

There is no uniform time limit as a definition of belonging to the old stock in libraries. In the handbook of the historical book inventory books before 1900 are considered. Often one thinks restrictively of holdings before the upheaval of secularization around 1800 . For Paul Raabe the era of the so-called older book lasted until 1830 (see Brinkhus). For Gerd Brinkhus ( University Library of Tübingen ) the historical old stock is "the library's capital [...] with which it binds a very heterogeneous clientele of historically philological scholars".

Sometimes the term is also used to refer to all books that came into the possession of a library before a certain date, regardless of their age. With this interpretation, if one uses “acquired before 1945” as a criterion for the definition of an old collection, a book published and acquired in 1930 would belong to the old collection, whereas a book published in 1600 but not acquired until 1970 would not. This definition by date of acquisition can be useful if the old inventory is only recorded in an older catalog (or not at all) and therefore has to be researched separately.

In addition to the academic libraries, the libraries of all other library types can also keep old holdings , for example old city ​​libraries (see also list of German libraries with prints from the 16th century ).

Critics complain that in modern libraries the old stock is neglected. If old stocks are put on the market, as was the case in 2002 when the old stock was sold by the North Elbian Church Library in Hamburg , sharp public criticism is voiced, pointing to the destruction of the historical connections by the retail sale. The allegations against owners of private libraries who are dissolving historical holdings go in the same direction . A prominent example in recent years is on since 1999 Auctions scattered court library Donaueschingen , a historic noble library . Only a few historical old holdings were secured as closed collections with the character of a cultural monument with the means of monument protection .

Old stocks in archives

The old holdings in archives usually include the files and historical archives that were created before 1945. Further temporal caesuras can be made depending on the archive. Larger archives usually hold reference libraries that also hold old literature to supplement the archive material.

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