Structuring the Mercurius Croaticus

Mercurius Croaticus is currently a set of TEI XML files containing bibliographical records. These files will be served and made accessible via the BaseX XML database, once we decide on how to present the records; our working premise is that, if researchers want to discover something really interesting, they'll be willing and ready to learn XQuery (not least because it's a powerful tool for more than one research project). And Mercurius Croaticus will help them learn.

To get a clear idea on what exactly is in the bibliographic collection, and to avoid confusion, we organised the files in three sets of folders, following the FRBR concept. There is a folder for authors (auctores), a folder for works (opera), and one for "manifestations" (it is interesting that a term for the third category is not readily available in any language I know); "manifestations" have two subfolders: manuscripts (MS) and printed books (typis edita). Obviously, the "internet" subfolder could also be included.

The folder auctores contains our starting prosopography — a set of 244 personal records for Croatian Latin authors included in the Leksikon hrvatskih pisaca (A Lexicon of Croatian Writers, Zagreb 2000) — and the "additions" file, containing currently 70 more neo-Latin authors of Croatian origin.

Main part of opera is also culled from the Leksikon hrvatskih pisaca — there are 1784 items listed — and there are 18 additional items as well.

The manifestations/MS subfolder has one special collection, with excerpts from Paul Oskar Kristeller's Iter Italicum (no, we don't have the money to subscribe to Brill's internet edition); it was excerpted by Darko Novaković, who kindly lent his notes to Mercurius for TEI XML conversion. And there are records collected from other sources, more or less obiter.

Finally, there is the manifestations/typis edita subfolder, where the basis is the bibliography made by Šime Jurić (1915–2004) in late 1960's: Iugoslaviae scriptores Latini recentioris aetatis (that is, its "Pars I. Opera scriptorum Latinorum natione Croatarum usque ad annum MDCCCXLVIII typis edita. Bibliographiae fundamenta. t. 1. Index alphabeticus. t. 2. Index systematicus. Additamentum I."), later improved by the Croatian National and University Library, and encoded by the Croatiae auctores Latini project. This collection contains 5867 bibliographic records on printed Latin publications with works by Croatian authors. Jurić's bibliography breaks off with the year 1850. Mercurius Croaticus should urgently supplement it with data on later publications, all the way up to the present.