Central Cataloguing of Medieval Manuscripts in the Eastern Provinces of Germany

Abstract

Efforts to provide descriptions of the many collections of Latin manuscripts in the Eastern Provinces of Germany were renewed in 1972 by establishing the Central Inventory of Medieval Manuscripts (Zentralinventar mittelalterlicher Handschriften bis 1500 in den Sammlungen der DDR), called ZIII. The ZIII will give a brief description of each manuscript in twelve categories, including foliation, author, title, incipit, and explicil of each work, as the first level of identification. From this will be developed several registers for different types of information. One of these is the Centra1 Registry of Incipits (Zentrales Initienregister, or ZIR) which is accessible by computer at the Deutsches Staatsbibliothek, Berlin. The ZIR has created its own computer programme and provided ten categories of information about each tract. It will retrieve the data by means of the characters of the incipit given by the manuscript as well as by means of a pseudo incipit which is efficient for searching.