| Summary: | The purpose of this study is to investigate if three scientific articles concerning the cataloguing of alba amicorum written in the 1980’s and early 1990’s had any influence on the cataloguing of alba amicorum. Another purpose is to investigate the similarities and differences between the catalogues from the late 1980’s and onward. The focus lies on the categories used when cataloguing the alba. Alba amicorum are catalogued on two levels: on a general level, i.e. the album as a whole is catalogued and in addition all the inscriptions in the album are cata-logued separately, the so-called leaf cataloguing. The study uses a comparative method. First the three scientific articles are compared with each other, then nine catalogues of alba amicorum from 1988 and onward, five printed and four online ones, are investigated regarding which categories are used respectively not used in the different catalogues. Then the categories pro-posed in the scientific articles are compared with the ones used in the catalogues. One result of the study is that the differences in the cataloguing on the general level between the printed catalogues are small but that the variation is larger amongst the online ones. The same patterns cannot be seen regarding the leaf cataloguing; here the variation between the catalogues is generally somewhat larger but the most central categories can be found in all catalogues. Another result is that some of the categories in the cata-logues reflect the printed or online form of the catalogue. The study shows that it is hard to define exactly which influence the scientific articles had on the catalogues but that it probably hasn’t been that large. Many of the categories occurring in the catalogues have been used when cataloguing alba amicorum since the early 1900’s. Maybe one could say that the alba themselves are con-stituted in such a way that it is more or less natural which categories should be used when cataloguing them. This is a two years master’s thesis in Archive, Library and Museum studies.
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