O sposobach udostępniania zawartości ksiąg metryk królewskich
On the Manner of Providing Access to the Contents of the Books of the Royal Metrica

Summary/Abstract: The discussion article provides an analysis of a book recently published by Wojciech Krawczuk entitled Records and Regesta of the German Expedition of the Royal Swedish Chancery of King Sigismund III of the Years 1597–1600. The book contains a source edition of the minutes of the royal chancery of Sigismund III Vasa, King of Poland, Grand Duke of Lithuania (1587–1632), and King of Sweden (he retained power in 1592–1599), written around 1600, which has been supplemented by extensive regesta prepared by the editor. This discussion article evaluates this form of providing access to the contents of primary sources against the background of similar source editions consisting of records created by other royal chanceries, namely the chancery of the Kingdom of Poland, the chancery of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the chancery of the dukes of Mazovia. It is noteworthy that increasingly more archival materials are made available online through the websites of various archives and other institutions that preserve historical documents. In view of the growing trend to digitalize primary sources and make them available online, the idea of publishing complete source editions including full source texts, which began at the beginning of the twentieth century, seems unjustified nowadays. Currently, the solution proposed by Wojciech Krawczuk, based on the publication of regesta, appears to be the most favourable. Perhaps it would be appropriate to link the published regesta even more closely to the digitized archival materials by providing each one of them with a link or QR code that would refer to the website hosting the relevant digitalized source. The content of the documents included in the reviewed book differs significantly from the content of the records created by the chanceries of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Swedish documents are dominated by current affairs, primarily concerning military and diplomatic issues, and include much fewer normative acts, such as appointments to offices and bestowals of landed property.

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