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NSK research project on Croatian incunabula receives grant from Adris Foundation

Hieronymus, Vitae sanctorum patrum. NSK Manuscripts and Old Books Collection.
Hieronymus, Vitae sanctorum patrum (1484). NSK Manuscripts and Old Books Collection.

The National and University Library in Zagreb (NSK) has been awarded a grant from the Adris Foundation for its research project on Croatian incunabula, Croatia’s first printed books.

With the €7,000 grant, awarded as a result of a personal donation by the President of the Adris grupa Ltd. Management Board and the Adris grupa Ltd. Supervisory Board Ante Vlahović, NSK will publish a monograph (Hrvatski prvotisci) presenting the results of more than a decade of research into the Croatian books dating from the 15th century. The research, which the Library conducted in cooperation with several partners, identified as many as 86 editions of Croatian incunabula in institutions all across Croatia, documenting a high level of development of Croatia’s culture in the mid-15th century and revealing so far unknown details about this invaluable heritage.

The project team guarding the foundations of Croatia’s written heritage

The monograph, which will make publicly available the data and photodocumentation gathered by conservation experts and heritage photographers, is being prepared under the supervision of the Assistant Professor at the Zadar university’s Department of Information Sciences Marijana Tomić, the monograph’s editor-in-chief, who apart from the field of the organisation of information also specialises in book history, the bibliographic description of rare and historical books and digital humanities.

Dante Alighieri, La Commedia (1487). NSK Manuscripts and Old Books Collection.
Dante Alighieri, La Commedia (1487). NSK Manuscripts and Old Books Collection.

Croatian incunabula widely available in digital form

The incunabula identified in Croatian institutions as a result of the project, of which four are in the Croatian Glagolitic script (glagoljiica) and 82 in the Latin script, will be comprehensively presented in the monograph in terms of their history and physical properties, with details concerning the collections in which they are preserved and individuals who played a vital part in their creation and preservation. Also, each description will be accompanied by a QR code leading to an incunabula’s digital copy, available on the Library’s NSK Digital Collections website.