Vademecum - FONTES. FOstering iNnovative Training in the use of European legal Sources - FONTES. FOstering iNnovative Training in the use of European legal Sources - Jagiellonian University

Vademecum

In this section, we attempted to deliver several useful suggestions & practical means which could be supportive in your search for sources of law in archives, databases and publications. The section was divided into several sub-sections:

1. Repositories. Here we have gathered links to and descriptions of numerous external services, which make it possible to either directly browse digitised and/or digitalised sources of law from the past, or gain access to such a content through them.

2. Tools. Reading the sources of law from the remote past may be sometimes as difficult as reading texts of some extinct civilisations. Even plain quotations of normative sources may appear difficult if one does not know the system & the semantics of the termini technici of legal texts may differ from basic meanings of particular words. Therefore, we have provided a few links to various tools and aids that would help you read, understand and interprete the sources.

3. OERs. While the educational materials produced in our Project were presented in the FONTES-Resources section, here you may find links to & descriptions of external educational resources.

4-5. Projects & Online Community. Teaching, learning, and research are getting more and more international, trans-disciplinary, and collaborative nowadays. Thus, we have prepared two more sub-sections (Projects & Online Community) that may help you build your own network of collaborators in research on legal sources from the past.

One should bear in mind, however, that the services gathered by us will not provide you with a full overview of the sources you need, and whatever should be known of them. In order to get a deepened orientation in respective matters, different resources should be combined, including also traditional bibliographies & catalogues of particular collections. We attempted to show this on several examples, and would like to support your search through some general suggestions below & in the Bibliographic hints sub-section.

» In Search for Sources: general modus operandi

When looking for printed or online source editions, one may refer to Internet gateways and online collections of digitised sources, many of which were listed in our External Resources/Repositories sub-sections General bibliographic orientation can also be obtained thanks to decent library catalogues or bibliographic databases: the ones that contain much information on legal history (e.g., of the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory), and/or on the Middle Ages (e.g. the Regesta Imperii), and/or that list both paper and online resources (e.g., the Jagiellonian Library Search Engine, ExplorUJ). Registered users of academic libraries may also gain access to some extra services, i.a. academic gateways & bibliographic tools offered by specialised companies, like the EBSCO Discovery Service, JSTOR or BREPOLiS.

Bibliographic information concerning source editions may be also searched for through thematic bibliographies (some of them were listed in the Bibliographic hints sub-section; often they are being published in specialised journals, and a list of legal-historical journals may be found, i.a., here), or handbooks, dictionaries & repertories. Most of them refer to particular countries or topics only; some of those may be found below, in the Bibliographic hints sub-section.

Search for unpublished materials should also begin with bibliographic query of the type described above, including printed catalogues of particular institutions (libraries & archives), and catalogues of broader scope, e.g. concerning particular groups of sources (e.g., Ulrich-Dieter Oppitz, Deutsche Rechtsbücher des Mittelalters...). One must bear im mind that each country, and in certain instances each region within particular states, has their own special regulations governing the collection, availability, and dissemination of archival materials. It is also important to recall that even the general rules may be different for the two main groups of institutions which take care of written historical heritage: libraries & archives.

Some examples of how to search for published & unpublished sources of law from the pre-modern era: Example 1, Example 2.