Bibliotheca universalis編纂のための情報源

抄録

Conrad Gessner's Bibliotheca Universalis (1545) is the first universal bibliography of the world. He intended to record all literature in Greek, Latin and Hebrew whether extant or not at his time. For this purpose it was necessary to use various information sources.
The sources can be divided into two categories, primary and secondary. The primary sources included Gessner's own collection, libraries, private collections and bookfairs, which allowed Gessner to examine books first hand. The secondary sources included library catalogs, bibliographies, other books, printers trade lists and personal letters, which allowed Gessner to collect information about the unavailable literature.
The author analyses the characteristics and values of each source. In summary, the following can be said;
(a) Most of the secondary sources Gessner used were the publications of Basel. According to this tendency, it can be supposed that the place of publication of most of the books in Bibliotheca was Basel.
(b) Gessner got a lot of citations from ancient or medieval authors rather than his contemporaries. This tendency can be considered a distinguishing trait of Bibliotheca.
(C) Usnally he used printed books rather than manuscripts as secondary sources. The characteristics of printed books at the time may be traced in Bibliotheca.
(d) As he gained reputation for his writings, he came to acquire more information using such informal communications as personal letters.
(c) By using various sources, inconsistencies occurred in the levels of Gessner's bibliographic descriptions. This means that it is not worth counting the literatures in Bibliotheca before deciding on the acceptable norm of his bibliographic descriptions.