THE EUROPEANA COLLECTIONS – TRANSYLVANIAN PRINTS FROM THE COLLECTIONS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE UNION FROM ALBA IULIA

Abstract

The Europeana Collections, inaugurated in 2008, represents the completion of an ambitious project intended to be a journey and an instrument for the access to the culture, the history and the identity of the Europeans. Nowadays, Europeana contains in its collections more than 58 million digital units, organized on domains and themes, from art works, artefacts and books to movies and music. The patrimony of the Europeana enriches yearly and constantly by the contribution of the European Member States, as response to the common aspiration to open the access to knowledge beyond the national or territorial borders. The Europeana Project represents the implementation by digitization of a set of standards and of a unitary approach on the valorisation by digitization of the patrimony of the European states. The country reports reflect the most accurate the measures and the achievements of each contributing state to Europeana. Therefore, the Romanian report – a document updated in January 2019 – presents punctually the achievements of our country and of the Romanian institutions contributing to the enrichment of the Europeana collections. The list of the contributors contains, next to the names of well-known libraries, the name of the National Museum of the Union from Alba Iulia, with 986 digital units. Related to the field of the prints, the National Museum of the Union is not a direct contributor, but its collections are uploaded by other contributors. The National Museum of the Union has a remarkable and extremely valuable collection of Transylvanian books, mainly printed in Cluj during the 18th century. There are 78 titles with a preponderantly religious, juridical and educational content, representing an important segment of the national cultural heritage. The present paper aims to approach the above mentioned works and to identify them in the Europeana collections.