Catalogues of Theological Literature
European theological libraries are cooperating with national, professional, ecumenical and denominational networks to make their collections visible. The majority of European countries have a national catalog and within them, one can search for theological collections and resources mostly coming from theology faculty libraries. But there are also joint catalogs and search engines of religious literature in Europe organized by theological library associations and specific libraries.
Below is a list of some of these projects across Europe, all of which are available in the public domain.
BeWeb – Beni Ecclesiastici in weB
BeWeb is a cross portal displaying the systematic census-taking carried out by Italian dioceses and ecclesiastical cultural institutions on their self-owned holdings belonging to their historical, artistic, archival, and library assets. The portal brings records of more than 6 million books located in over 200 dioceses across Italy. The project is supported and maintained by the National Office for Ecclesiastical Cultural Heritage and Religious Buildings of the Italian Bishop’s Conference.
Catalog of Dominican Libraries in Poland
The joint catalog of Dominican libraries in Poland includes the entire collection of books and magazines of the libraries of the College of Philosophy and Theology oo. Dominicans in Krakow and the Thomistic Institute in Warsaw, and several other Dominican archives, institutes, and monasteries across Poland.
FIDES CENTRAL Catalogue and META SEARCH ENGINE
The Federation of Polish Ecclesiastical Libraries – FIDES.maintains a Central Catalogue which unifies records from big and small academic and ecclesiastical theological libraries across Poland. The association also maintains a meta-search engine called FIDKAR.
Fihrist
FIHRIST is a union catalogue of manuscripts from the Islamicate world launched by the Oxford and Cambridge University libraries.
GlobeTheolib
Global Digital Library on Theology and Ecumenism (GlobeTheoLib) is a project of the World Council of Churches that brings resources on applied ethics, education, and religious studies from all over the world. The records are as of 2019 integrated into the Globethics.net library.
Index Theologicus – IxTheo
IxTheo is an international scientific open access bibliography for theology and religious studies maintained by the university library in Tübingen in cooperation with the Protestant and Catholic faculty of the same university and supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG). With over two million titles, it is the largest free open source bibliography of theological publications in Europe.
Jesuitica
Jesuitica is a project of the Maurits Sabbe Library, Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. The Library houses a vast number of historic volumes that belonged to several regional Jesuit houses and centres of education in the Low Countries. The records in Jesuitica are included in the Jesuit Online Bibliography.
Jewish Studies.de
Jewish Studies.de is a search portal of the German Specialised Information Service Jewish Studies (SIS Jewish Studies). It gives central access to electronic and printed books and periodicals, and databases in the entire spectrum of Jewish and Israel Studies.
MENALIB – the middle east virtual library
MENALIB Virtual Library is a German project that provides central access to the holdings, offers, and services of the Specialized Information Service (FID) for Middle East-, North Africa- and Islamic Studies. The portal is maintained since 2016 by the University and State Library of Saxony-Anhalt in Halle and is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Many large and important German and European libraries and museums that possess Islamic collections contribute and partner with MENALIB.
RACHEL: RÉSEAU EUROPÉEN DES BIBLIOTHÈQUES JUDAICA ET HEBRAICA
Rachel is a union catalogue and network of several Jewish libraries in France. It has close to 200,000 bibliographic records and is integrated into major French union catalogs.
RelBib
RelBib is a comprehensive online bibliography for the study of religion maintained by the Tübingen University Library. The bibliography represents a special view of the underlying data pool of IxTheo (Index Theologicus) focussing on the field of the study of religion.
unitas
UNITAS is a joint catalogue of Hungarian Christian and Jewish religious libraries. It includes more than 1.2 million records from 30 collections. The catalogue is maintained by the Hungarian Association of Ecclesiastical Libraries (EKE).
Réseau Valdo
Valdo is a union catalog and a network of the French Protestant libraries and associated institutions. Created in 2008, its aim is to promote the conservation and dissemination of Protestant cultural heritage, as well as documentation in the fields of Protestantism, biblical studies, ecumenism, mission, and Protestant theology.
THE sunna project
The Sunna Project aims to assemble the entirety of hadith literature and to prepare and publish definitive critical editions of every hadith collection. The Project is affiliated with the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Centre of Islamic Studies, University of Cambridge, and supported by the Thesaurus Islamicus Foundation.
Virtueller Katalog Theologie und Kirche (VThK)
Meta-catalogue with 8 million records from theological and ecclesiastical libraries in the German-speaking area. The records are included in the Karlsruhe Virtual Catalogue (KVK) search engine. VThK is a project of the “Arbeitsgemeinschaft katholisch-theologischer Bibliotheken” (Consortium of Catholic Theological libraries) and the “Verband kirchlich-wissenschaftlicher Bibliotheken” (Association of religious-scholarly libraries of the Protestant Churches in Germany) under the supervision of the Erzbischöfliche Diözesan- und Dombibliothek Köln (the Archdiocesan and Cathedral Library of Cologne).