Purpose of the Repertorium Veterrimarum Societatum Litterariarum The Basic Goal of the Repertorium Introductory remarks he Repertorium Veterrimarum Societatum Litterariarum (Inventory of the Oldest Scholarly Societies) of the Scholarly Societies Project represents initial work in gathering society information that is likely to be of special interest to historians. It is concerned especially with societies that contributed to the scholarly record through their publications, or were in some other way important in the history of scholarship. Problems Encountered in Historical Work on Scholarly Societies Basic information on the Society ometimes determining even the founding date of a society can be a daunting task. Establishing when name changes occurred is often more difficult, since existing documentation can be hard to find. Existing sources for this kind of information There do exist good sources for this kind of information for certain types of scholarly societies. One example is Maylender (1926-1930), which is a five-volume work covering many hundreds of Italian societies and academies founded before about 1850. Another example is Bibliographie Générale des Travaux Historiques et Archéologiques, which is a multi-volume work covering French societies that devoted at least some of their resources to historical and archaeological studies; it generally contains basic historical information about each society covered. But there is no reference work that provides basic historical information on scholarly societies from all countries for all subject areas. Historical information about journals of the Society In addition, it can sometimes be rather difficult to establish the correct title, publishing years and volume numbers for older journals of scholarly societies. The problem is exacerbated by frequent changes in the society's name caused by political upheavals, for example, those in France from 1792 to 1870. An additional problem for historians and librarians is that the journal-title abbreviations used in the older literature for are especially challenging to decipher when society journals are concerned. Existing sources for this kind of information The most appropriate place to find historical information about journals of a society is to consult the catalogue of a library with rich holdings and good-quality cataloguing data. It should be noted that there is no single library catalogue that would suffice to cover all scholarly societies; nor are there even as few as a dozen that would suffice to do so. In practice many must be consulted. Most of the online catalogues consulted in the preparation of the Repertorium Veterrimarum Societatum Litterariarum are listed in Online Catalogues. The Creation of History Pages to Store This Information History pages provide historical information that is mainly restricted to the contribution to the scholarly record t was decided to create pages containing this sort of historical data. The Editor has chosen to call these pages history pages, although they dwell only infrequently on one of the common concerns of historians, namely the history of the actions of the Society under consideration (especially political and organizational matters). The history pages of the Repertorium, by contrast, are concerned more with the history of the Society in a more restricted sense: history as it is revealed in the scholarly record, in particular, in the sequence of journals that the Society has published. First component of the history pages The pages consist of two major components. The first component is about the society itself. It contains data that is closest to that in conventional histories: (1) date of founding, (2) information on name changes, (3) cessation date, if appropriate, (4) time period of dormancy, if appropriate, and (5) URL of website, if one is available. Second component of the history pages The second (and usually larger) component contains information on the contribution of the society to the scholarly record, through their journals, or other collected writings of society members. It consists of a series of records for the journals of the society, including the following information: (1) journal title, (2) the years and volume numbers for that run of the title, (3) notes concerning the availability of the text in the volumes at full-text archives, (4) notes linking the journal title to titles that continue it or are continued by it, (5) links to the library catalogues the supplied the data, and (6) abbreviations used by contemporaneous bibliographies for the journal title. Access to the history page for a society There are currently two ways to find the history page in this Project. Firstly, you can locate the society through the SEARCH ENGINE located at the bottom of the top-level page of the Project. Alternatively, if you know the founding year, you can consult the chronological arrangement known as Annales de Societatibus Litterariis Conditis = A Chronicle of the Founding of Scholarly Societies. Index to the Journal-Title Abbreviations Providing access to the information on journal titles t was recognized that a user who is interested in a certain journal may not know which society published the journal. Therefore it was necessary to provide some sort of access to the rich store of information on the society journals in addition to the access that was already available via the name of the sponsoring society. Access using journal-title abbreviation If the user has a journal-title abbreviation of a journal published by a scholarly society, the user may search for that using the Search Engine. Documentation: Materials and Tools Used Introductory remarks he section entitled Elaboratorium Apertum: Materia et Armamenta (The Elaboratory Laid Open: Materials and Tools) enumerates the important resources that were used for this Repertorium Veterrimarum Societatum Litterariarum, with a link to a description of each resource. For online resources, a link to the resource is also given. This section also includes the working files of this Repertorium. The purposes of this section This section serves several purposes. Firstly, it provides the Editor with a handy set of tools to use in creating the history pages. It also serves as a reminder to the Editor of those societies for which further investigation is required; perhaps the best example of this is the area entitled Journal Title Abbreviations Not in the Repertorium. Finally this collection of information may also be of interest to the user of the Repertorium Veterrimarum Societatum Litterariarum. Published 2004, June 7 Modified 2025, April 26 Jim Parrott, Editor Repertorium Veterrimarum Societatum Litterariarum Sending Email to the Project