Manuscripts of many authors are scattered in several institutions and may be very difficult to locate, despite the growing number of catalogues available online. MALVINE aimed to offer over the Internet a simultaneous access to the main European databases of literary archives. The user can select the databases to query and type in search arguments of several kinds, such as name, title, place, date etc., with the help of a multilingual thesaurus. S/he is then shown all corresponding records from the selected databases in a common presentation format. The Swiss National Library contributes by integrating in MALVINE the data of the 'Repertorium der handschriftlichen Nachlässe in den Bibliotheken und Archiven der Schweiz' and a sample of Helveticat records describing manuscripts collections. The data providers and the main technical partner will soon constitute a consortium to exploit the results of the project, which was considered very successful.
SEE
http://www.malvine.org
