Catalogues of the Ossolineum Library

Information about the Ossolineum collections is available in several catalogues divided according to the type and time of creation of the particular document. The contents of each catalogue are described below.

Collections by type and time of creation

The collections are mainly divided into printed works and manuscripts. The printed works are divided into those published before 1800 (early printed books) and those published after 1800. The printed works are divided into books, periodicals and various types of ephemeral prints.

The Ossolineum collections can be ordered in seven reading rooms. Many items, especially the oldest and most valuable ones, are available online in the DBC (Lower Silesian Digital Library) and on the Google Arts & Culture portal. Part of the collection is available only in electronic form (on DVDs) or in microforms (miniaturised photographic copies of documents that can be read on special equipment) in the Microforms and Digital Collections Division Reading Room.

As a result of the history of the National Ossolinski Institute, a large part of the pre-war Ossolineum collections are now located in Lviv. Below, under the heading Pre-war Ossolineum Collections in Lviv, we provide links to the catalogues of these collections, which are held at the Vasyl Stefanyk National Scientific Library of Ukraine in Lviv. In cooperation with the institutions of Lviv, objects from this historic collection are gradually being digitised and made available.

Online Main Catalogue

The largest is currently the Ossolineum Library Online Main Catalogue. It contains the following collections::

  • all books published since 1999 and periodicals published since 2002 (descriptions of earlier publications are successively introduced into the catalogue)
  • early printed books (catalogued in this catalogue since 2006)
  • cartographic collections (catalogued in this catalogue since 2020)
  • collections from the gift of Jacob Forst-Battaglia stored and made available at the Scientific Station of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Vienna

Although the Main Catalogue is constantly being updated with older and older publications, it is still not complete. If you wish to search the entire Ossolineum collection, you should consult the catalogues listed below.

Please note: All documents listed in the Online Main Catalogue should be ordered through this catalogue. Items not included in the Online Main Catalogue should be ordered via the paper form (available in the Reading Rooms) or the online form available via the button below.

Scanned Card Catalogues

Information on books and periodicals from the 19th and 20th centuries can be found in two scanned card catalogues:

Early printed books

Most of the early printed books from the Ossolineum collections are available online:

  • in the Lower Silesian Digital Library (DBC) (all incunabula, most of the 16th-18th century polonica, as well as 18th century foreign prints of particular editorial value, e.g. richly illustrated), and
  • in the Digital Resources Database (in Polish) (mainly objects from the pre-war Ossolineum collections, now in Lviv).

Two Catalogues of Manuscripts

The manuscripts collected in the Ossolineum Library are divided into those that have been fully processed (bibliographic description is complete, some items have been microfilmed) and those that have been pre-processed (collected and recorded in the accession book):

Some manuscripts, especially from the pre-war Ossolineum collections, are available online in the Digital Resources Database and the Lower Silesia Digital Library (see above).

Detailed descriptions of the inventoried manuscripts can be found in the multi-volume printed Inventory. More information about this publication can be found on the website of the Manuscripts Division Reading Room.

Pre-war Ossolineum collections in Lviv

After the war, only about 30% of the pre-war Ossolineum collections found their way to Wroclaw. The National Institute began to cooperate with the institutions in Lviv in order to make the pre-war collections available again to Polish readers. The collections created so far are

  • An inventory of 17th and 18th century prints from the historical collection of the Ossolineum in the collection of the Vasyl Stefanyk National Scientific Library of Ukraine in Lviv (in Polish). The project, part of the National Programme for the Development of the Humanities, was carried out by Dorota Sidorowicz-Mulak and Agnieszka Franczyk-Cegła from the Ossolineum Library in cooperation with the Rare Books Department of the Stefanyk Library.
  • A catalogue of Polish and foreign-language periodicals on Polish affairs kept in the Stefanyk Library, covering the period from the end of the 18th century to 1939 (in Polish). The result of the work of the Division of Periodicals of the Ossolineum Library. With 5495 titles, this extensive collection was one of the largest in the country before the war. Access to selected digitised periodicals (information in the catalogue) is available in the Division of Microforms of the Ossolineum Library.
  • Digitised part of the pre-war Ossolineum collections of the Stefanyk Library.
  • A Digital catalogue of a number of 17th-18th century printed items (in Polish) from the Ossolineum collections of the V. Stefanyk Library in Lviv will be created by 2027. The project is being implemented by the Ossolineum Library as part of the National Programme for the Development of the Humanities.