The State of Libraries in Eighteenth-Century Europe: Adalbert Blumenschein's "Beschreibung Verschiedener Bibliotheken in Europa"

In his "Beschreibung verschiedener Bibliotheken in Europa," Adalbert Blumenschein (1720-81), an Austrian librarian and priest, described almost 2,500 eighteenth-century European libraries, perhaps the largest survey of libraries ever carried out by an individual. After briefly introducing Blumenschein's work, which is preserved in a single manuscript copy in the Austrian National Library, and comparing it to selected other library works of the period, this article summarizes its contents, including the number and characteristics of the entries, locations and types of libraries covered, and the work's sources of data.