Collection of chapsbooks, broadsheets and couplets

Collection of chapsbooks represent a specific genre of book production of a “consumer” or “popular” nature. Today, however, they are severely threatened due to their physical state and due to their “ephemerality” and bibliographic rarity and uniqueness. With regard to the research possibilities opened after 1989, the Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, as the body responsible for cultural heritage in the field of folk culture in the Czech Republic, decided to take the approach of gradually systemising the processing of chapsbooks.

In 2001–2006, the Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences took part in the Programme for the Support of Targeted Research and Development organised by the Czech Academy of Sciences. The objective of this programme was to protect, permanently store and catalogue the collection of chapsbooks stored at the Prague library of the Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences. The tangible result of the long-running effort was publication of a catalogue in 2008 with an extensive index. The second volume, published in 2012, focused on research topics that had hitherto been ignored in Czech historiography: biblical and Christian iconography of broadside ballads.

In 2015, the Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences joined the AV21 Strategy research project, which focuses on researching collective memory across the entire spectrum of knowledge and research. This project also aims to record the collective memory and cultural memory of society and making it accessible to all. A product of this project is the Electronic Broadside ballads Catalogue, which is a joint project of Markéta Holubová of the Department of Historical Ethnology and Ludmila Kopalové of the Scientific Information Department. This catalogue provides a relatively representative example of Czech broadside ballads (i.e., 3371 records) dating from 1704 to 1901.

In 2017, the Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Science undertook as part of the AV21 Strategy research project the processing of a collection of German chapsbooks, broadsheets and couplets in the form of an electronic database and its online accessibility via the internet. The electronic catalogue of German chapsbooks, broadsheets and couplets is the work of Markéta Holubová from the Department of Historical Ethnology and presents a relatively representative sample of German chapsbook production in Central Europe (i.e., 280 records) spanning 1674-1874.