The Index Librorum Civitatum. Index of town records of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Times, a tool for basic historical research

该项目旨在建立一个可免费访问的在线数据库和创新的研究工具，首次记录了中世纪和早期现代(约.1300至约1800)整个德意志联邦共和国地区的城镇记录(公民图书馆)，独立于其当代的存放处。随着记录概述、查找辅助工具、关键版本和研究文献的增加，数据库将扩大到以宪法和行政史为重点的中世纪和早期现代城市的综合参考清单。城镇记录的系统索引及其学术背景将被理解为历史基础研究的一种基本形式。因此，一个重要但尚未开发的资源类型将被提供给广泛的课程和跨学科研究，这将给历史研究带来新的刺激。在项目的连续阶段，项目团队的学者将进行专题研究，一方面通过系统地记录城镇记录和相应的研究文献/关键版本来推进数据库的内容。另一方面，这些研究还将探讨一些特殊的问题，从而促进图书馆学研究中语用素养方法论和理论层面的讨论。选定研究的地理范围将超出德意志联邦共和国的范围，以便在国际学术交流和比较中了解欧洲的公民自由现象。这些研究的主要问题是关于行政记录的媒体、语境和机构的问题，以及从13世纪到17世纪末作为一种文化实践的某些形式的行政写作作为一种文化实践的挪用、转化和发展的方式和机制。在这些基础研究的框架内开发ILC数据库的机会将有助于开发图书馆公民的知识潜力，特别是关于广泛的社会和文化历史问题。

The project Index Librorum Civitatum (ILC) aims to establish a freely accessible online database and innovative research tool, which documents for the first time the medieval and early modern (approx. 1300 to about 1800) town records (libri civitatis) for the entire area of the Federal Republic of Germany, independently from their contemporary depository. With the addition of record overviews, finding aids, critical editions and research literature the database will be expanded to a comprehensive list of references of the medieval and early modern city focused on constitutional and administrative history. The systematic indexing of town records as well as their scholarly contextualization will be understood as an elementary form of historical basic research. Thereby a crucial but untapped type of source will be made accessible for a wide curricular and cross-disciplinary research, which will give a new stimulus to the historical research.In the successive phases of the project the scholars of the project team are going to do special studies, which on the one hand advance the content of the database through systematic recording of town records and the corresponding research literature/critical editions. On the other hand special issues are to be investigated by these researches, giving stimuli on the methodological and theoretical discussions on the facets of pragmatic literacy in the context of the libri civitatis research. The geographical area of selected studies will go beyond the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany in order to contextualize the European phenomenon of the liber civitatis in international scholarly exchange and comparison. The main issues of these studies are especially questions about media, contexts, and agencies of administrative recordings, as well as the ways and mechanisms of appropriation, transformation and development of certain forms of administrative writing as a cultural practice from the 13th to the end of the 17th century.Exploiting the opportunities of the ILC database in the framework of these basic researches will help to deploy the knowledge potentials of libri civitatis in particular concerning a broad spectrum of social and cultural-historical questions.