Cieszyn Library magazine catalogue

Search system
Cieszyn Library magazine catalogue includes the descriptions of the following categories:

    • periodicals from historic book collections which were singled out and merged into a separate magazine repository in the 1970s and the 1980s, when the resources of the Historic Branch of the Silesian Library were being rearranged (Note: Not all magazines from historic book collections were separated at that time. If you are looking for descriptions of periodicals which were not singled out, you need to go to the catalogues of individual book collections; the above applies in particular to Leopold Jan Szersznik’s library),
    • periodicals from the former museum book collection which were not singled out during the abovementioned rearrangement, but were preliminarily sorted out and described in the beginning of the 1990s,
    • periodicals acquired by the Historic Branch and gathered by Cieszyn Library, which constitute the main repository of magazines in our library. Periodicals from historic collections are gradually joining this repository because the process of cataloguing them is still underway. (Note: The card catalogue contains only descriptions of items acquired by Cieszyn Library before 2004; the descriptions of our more recent acquisitions can be found in our catalogue database).

Cieszyn Library magazine catalogue is not uniform. Descriptions included in it can be divided into three groups. They correspond to the three abovementioned magazine repositories. The first group (call marks beginning with “C”) includes descriptions made in the 1970s and the 1980s, when the magazine repository was singled out from historic collections. These call marks are not consistent with current cataloguing rules for non-serial publications, yet they do contain a detailed specification of this resource. The second group (call marks beginning with “NO” or “M”) includes provisional cards for magazines from the former museum collection. They only contain basic information about a given magazine. The third group (call marks beginning with “CZ”) includes catalogue descriptions of contemporary magazines and periodicals from historic collections which were catalogued retrospectively in accordance with contemporary standards for cataloguing serial publications. All the descriptions were drawn up on cards in the international format. When it comes to magazines from the former museum collection, their cards were filled in by hand and in the case of the rest of our magazines, there are typescripts or computer printouts. The catalogue is arranged alphabetically by titles. The only exception are reports, whose cards are arranged by unified headings with the name of the institution they apply to (e.g. Sprawozdania – Gimnazjum Polskie [Cieszyn]). Call marks of magazines can be found in the top right corner of the catalogue card.

Description components

    • main heading
    • title
    • statement of responsibility (omitted in the case of the former museum collection)
    • publisher’s name and publication place and year (omitted in the case of the former museum collection)
    • physical description (omitted in the case of the former museum collection)
    • resource designation
    • library comments (all changes in the publishing of a magazine are given next to the resource designation; it is omitted in the case of the former museum collection)

The integrated alphabetical magazine catalogue is available in the form of a manual catalogue in the General Reading Room of Cieszyn Library. Descriptions of magazines which were catalogued recently, both those coming from the old resource and newly acquired items, are also available in the digital database. The process of cataloguing the historic collections of Cieszyn Library is underway and the descriptions of the rest of our magazine resources will be gradually entered into the database.

Książnica Cieszyńska