Republished as new eBooks.

It is unique that titles from a rare Benedictine nunnery library are available in digital publications – eBooks – including electronic bibliographic records.

For the benefit of long-term archiving, the titles are filmed on microfiche, and electronic records are also available for these media.

The Benedictine nuns of St. Walburg maintain a Convent library that has been preserved for centuries. The Baroque convent has remained intact for centuries – unlike other German-speaking Convent – except for a fire in the 17th century.

After the secularization (year 1804), this convent and its library were not secularized by fortunate circumstances – what a stroke of luck in history. At the very latest during the secularization, many convent libraries were dissolved or destroyed by ‘epigones’ of the Enlightenment: Library holdings from men’s monasteries were transferred to State libraries. Women’s convent libraries fared much worse. Although they had fortunately survived the Thirty Years’ War (years 1618-1648) unscathed, Enlightenment zealots began – at the very latest during the secularization – to classify Nuns’ convent library holdings as harmful and thus, in most cases, irretrievably destroyed them.

Approximately 10% of our eBook-titles from the early 16th century (the earliest publication dates from 1514) to the early 19th century are in Latin, but most works are printed in German Language. Noteworthy is the large number of titles in Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and French Languages, which were promptly translated into German Language for German publications. This demonstrates the lively cultural exchange between the countries in Europe during the Baroque period.

Approximately 5% of the works date from the 16th century, 27% from the 17th century, 61% from the 18th century, and the rest from the first half of the 19th century.

The Convent library did not maintain a physical catalogue of this private historical book collection with titles published before 1900. And there is no public access to the library with its titles; this access is reserved for the nuns.

The selection criteria for our titles were the rarity of the books and their physical condition in the Convent library; we did not interfere into the historical physical substance of any volume.

Where available, first editions were given priority over later editions. And the title selection was intended to reflect the library’s character.

To address adequately the difficult task of subject-specific library classification based on an academic layer of such historical theological / religious sources from past centuries, the Regensburg Classification System for Theology was considered as suitable and therefore applied. The formal structure and indexing of the titles are based on RSWK rules.

The eBooks were produced with the text of the underlying old books as digitally enhanced facsimile pages, edited accordingly by the publisher, and republished. The original typography, layout, and type area, including any “typesetting errors” in the text, as well as any handwritten notes from the originals, were also republished and unchanged in the eBooks. Each eBook offers user-friendly access to individual texts, specific pages, sections, etc. via manual and electronic bookmarks, which are individually integrated in each work, as well as to an original table of
contents, if one is available.

The eBooks are available in various compilations. Regarding digital use by an institution, a license agreement is in place. This agreement defines, among other things, the electronic access options for authorized users in academic institutions (LAN, NETWORK, etc.).

Our eBooks demonstrate the value and character of a historic and closed Nuns’ Convent library, which is thereby made publicly accessible.

Theology, Spirituality, Religion, Works from a significant Convent library,
originally printed in the 16th – 19th Centuries,
including writers from the 12th -18th Centuries
682 authors
1838 titles (bibliographic units)
1933 eBooks, Texts are in GERMAN Language
with the contents (texts, images etc.) from the periods in approximately 3,500 physical books
approx. 715,000 full-text pages.

Upon request, we can compile author / title lists for you.
Further information can be found in our SHOP.

Here is our introduction to how we present here some texts in ENGLISH LANGUAGE:

Most of our CONVENT LIBRARY eBooks titles (including texts in the electronic Bibliographic records in International University Library Standards) are in German Language, including names of collections, sets and subsets etc.
Therefore – when we think it makes sense – we leave such related texts and information in its German Language from the original printed works of the 16th – 19th Centuries.

Notes:
* Information is subject to change at any time and without notice.
** “Title” means “bibliographic unit”, i.e., one title contains the content of at least one “physical” volume. However, depending on the original work, “title” can also contain the contents of two or more books and / or journals or magazines.