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Editorial 2021/1

Dear Friends,
Allow me to present to you the summer issue of our magazine, which focuses both on historical themes (renaissance printers, and an interesting find of a fragment of a music score associated with Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris), and on current topics (for understandable reasons, the theme of covid and libraries holds sway in this issue …).
In the first article, the author describes the relationship of renaissance printers to the printed image. The article deals with the Christological cycle of the sixteenth century monogramist ME and presents fifteen previously unknown items. Jiří Melantrich z Aventinu also used this cycle in his New Testament publications.
In the second article, the authors confront us with the current situation concerning the publication of e-books. They interpret their research into the publishers, and into the publishers’ experience of and relationship to the publishing, publicising and lending of e-books before and during the coronavirus crisis.
The author of the third article deals with the origin, development and further destinies of the Czech National Bibliography of Articles (now and in the recent past connected with the ANL database, with work coordinated by the National Library of the Czech Republic): with the cooperative system of bibliographising articles, its functioning and, unfortunately, its infamous conclusion. It describes the efforts being made to renew the analytical description system in the Czech Republic in full, and outlines its possible future development.
Another current topic returns to the link with the coronavirus pandemic: the author analyses experience up to the present with making available out of print works (DNNT) during several waves of the coronavirus pandemic. These are digitized documents, stored mainly in the National Digital Library (NDK), but when made available, subject to restrictions resulting from copyright protection. The author follows up his own article, which we published in last summer’s issue, where he described his first experiences with making digitized works available (under specific conditions) to university students and educators, as well as to science and research users during the first wave of the coronavirus crisis in spring 2020. What use can the National Digital Library be put to, and whom does it serve? What services does it provide and can it go on doing so into the future? The author answers these questions in his contribution.
Another contribution concerns a historical topic - the finding of a very interesting and rare fragment of a manuscript music score from the second half of the thirteenth century, which reached our land from Notre-Dame in Paris and was discovered thanks to the international reach of digitalised manuscripts, more precisely "our" Manuscriptorium. How was this interesting discovery made, what can it tell us, and what can such discoveries bring us in the future?
We remember on our website our colleague, PhDr. Jana Sodomková, who recently departed this life. She devoted all her professional life to the National Library of the Czech Republic (State Library of the Czechoslovak Republic). A small memory of this librarian is supplemented by an overview of her worthy and diverse publishing activities.
We also publish two reviews. The first is a response to the electronic publication The Book in the 21st Century - conference proceedings, published on the occasion of the conference of the same name, which took place at the Silesian University in Opava in February 2020.
The second review presents the content of a magnificent collection of ex-libris from Poland (but with the participation of international authors), published by the Pedagogical University of Krakow in 2018 on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the first Polish ex-libris (the anniversary refers to 2016).
This issue is supplemented by the Tips from the Library of Library Literature section – about acquisitions you will hopefully be able to borrow in person (if the situation allows) from the Library of Library Literature of the National Library of the Czech Republic, as well as the traditional News of Foreign Library Literature. This time these focus on a range of topics related to research data, virtual research environment, fair principles of data management, training of data management staff, etc. (we drew from the Data Science Journal).
I would like to thank all those who contributed to the emergence of this issue of the Library: the Library Review, on behalf of the editorial staff, and I wish you, dear readers, a beautiful summer - for example, in the company of our magazine.

 

překlad: Barbara Day

May 19, 2022
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