You will begin your work in Kremsmünster! Part 4: Collegeville: The Microfilm Library Begins

A word must also be said about the operation at Saint John’s.  Ab initio there was probably little thought that the microfilm collection would expand to present proportions and eventually constitute a new library in its own name.  When I first returned from Austria in 1966, the films were simply stored in a small seminar room on the library’s second level. Few thought that there should be extensive facilities for consulting the films.  The new library was already under construction when the microfilm project was conceived.  By chance I met Fr. Paulin (Michael) Blecker in the library.  He from the beginning had shown an interest in the project, and I mentioned to him the pitiful way in which the films were being stored.  He asked me to come with him to the basement of the library, where he showed me to larger adjoining rooms not being used for much (I believe they were intended for the education department).  Since after another year the seminar room on the second level would already be crowded with stored films, I called the abbot’s and president’s attention to these available rooms in the basement of the library for the microfilm collection.

About the same time (June 1966) Dr. Julian G. Plante was engaged as curator of the new microfilm collection.  Some time after my return to Europe, the films were moved to the two basement rooms in the library where, before many years, the situation again became crowded not only with films and reference works, but also with people.  Catalogers, scholars, and visitors were falling over each other. Even the approach via a long stairway was awkward and uninviting, especially for elderly scholars, and there was no public elevator in the library.  This situation was solved by the new Bush Center.  It is readily approachable and has space to house three times the present microfilm collection and three times the present number of reference books, besides providing adequate facilities for catalogers and for scholars to do their work.

Who would ever have dreamt in 1964 that the microfilm collection for medieval manuscripts would grow to its present proportions?  There are well over 73,000 manuscripts from complete collections in Austria, Spain, Portugal, England, Germany, Ethiopia, and Malta.  In addition, copies of individual manuscripts were also obtained by purchase or exchange from libraries in France, Italy, Hungary, Belgium, Netherlands, Sweden, Russia, and Israel.  It is the largest medieval manuscript collection on microfilm in the world.  The Saint Louis University microfilm collection contains 30,000 Vaticanmanuscripts (no color films) from the fifth century to the nineteenth century.  Ours are from the sixth century to 1600, besides papyri dated from before Christ, and containssome 60,000 color films.

There are libraries, like the British Library—formerly the British Museum—and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, which have perhaps 40,000 manuscripts, but not nearly all are “medieval” manuscripts.  The Austrian Nationalbibliothek in Vienna also has 34,000 manuscripts, which makes it the fourth largest manuscript collection in Europe, but only 14,000 were medieval manuscripts when we cataloged that collection.

In his December 28, 1976 report on the financial statement of Saint John’s Abbey and University, the corporate treasurer valued the book holdings of the Alcuin library at $1,379,877 and the microfilm collection in the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library, built up during only a decade, at $982,316.  Incidentally, the Alcuin Library and its book collection were not handed to Saint John’s on a platter as were the microfilm collection and the Bush Center—the Hill and Bush grants alone total over $2,000,000.  There have also been many grants from a continually developing number of foundations and friends.  The Hill Museum & Manuscript Library contains in one convenient center the precious medieval manuscripts or earliest books of some one hundred European libraries, along with the facilities to study and use precious materials which will never go out of date but will increase in value as the years and centuries roll by.

The microfilm collection housed at Saint John’s has value even if it is not as yet completely cataloged.  While photographing the manuscript collections in Austria, we also photographed unpublished handwritten catalogs as well as catalogs which were only on cards.  These were later made available in xeroxed book form by University Microfilms.  While they are indeed a help, they still are not a substitute for a good integrated catalog job done on the spot where the films are kept.  But such cataloging is not an easy task.  It demands language skills, especially Latin, a good knowledge of medieval culture, theology, Scripture, and the humanities, and powers of concentration and of exercising infinite patience. 

The 73,000 microfilmed manuscripts—meaning so many bound volumes—contain over 200,000 separate titles or items which must be cataloged separately.  By comparison, the 300,000 books in the Alcuin Library consist of about 170,000 distinct items or titles.  A twenty-volume encyclopedia, for example, is one item or title.  The manuscript cataloger must do original cataloging every incipit of the way.  He does not have the convenience of a title page, a table of contents, printed Library of Congress cards, or some other source of printed cards to work with.  It will be an excellent ministry awaiting Saint John’s monks of the future.  I gave forty-one years of my monastic career to library work, the bulk of which was devoted to doing a cataloging job which begged to be done.  The career began one month after completing the novitiate in July 1923 when Abbot Alcuin Deutsch, like myself, out for a morning stroll after breakfast, called me: “Father Oliver, come here.  I want you to work in the library.”  And thereon hangs the tale.

Within the brief space of twenty years, there have been major changes in the names of institutions involved in this microfilm project; namely the original Monastic Manuscript Microfilm Library is now the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library; the Hill Family Foundation—actually the Louis W. and Maud Hill Family Foundation—now is the Northwest Area Foundation; University Microfilms in Ann Arbor, now is the University Microfilms International.  Unchanged remain the names of: Al Heckman, Oliver Kapsner, and Julian Plante. 

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