The Publication of the New Issue of Acta Musei Nationalis Pragae – Historia litterarum

This year’s first double issue of the journal Acta Musei Nationalis Pragae – Historia litterarum (Vol. 68, 2023/1–2) is dedicated to the eightieth birthday of PhDr. Helga Turková, director of the National Museum Library in 1990–2004 and a former longterm employee of its Castle Library Department. The friends and colleagues of Helga Turková have contributed to this double issue according to their areas of expertise. We can thus find here studies on various subjects as well as shorter contributions, included in the sections Materialia or Miscellanea, which are devoted to early printed books, selected castle libraries, interesting book-provenance records, and other topics concerning book culture. This double issue also contains a special supplement with a bibliography of Helga Turková’s works for the years 2013–2022 and short personal reminiscences of her colleagues such as Jaroslava Kašparová and Alena Petruželková.

The double issue also comprises other regular sections, including two reviews. The first of them is devoted to the collective work Slepí svědkové doby. Slepotisková výzdoba na české knižní vazbě 16. století (katalog výstavy) [Blind Witnesses of Time. Blind-Stamped Decoration on Book Bindings in the Czech Lands in the 16th Century (an Exhibition Catalogue)], which was published as one of the outcomes of the NAKI II project ‘Slepí svědkové doby. Slepotisková výzdoba knižních vazeb’ [Blind Witnesses of Time. Blind-Stamped Decoration on Book Bindings] in 2022. The second review focuses on the collective monograph Companion to Central and Eastern European Humanism. Volume 2: The Czech Lands. Part 1. A–L, an important publication for the Czech environment published by the prestigious publisher DeGruyter in 2020, including contributions by a number of authors from academic institutions in the Czech Republic. In the section The News from the National Museum Library, my colleague Martina Vyšohlídová from the Book Culture Department writes about the exhibition dedicated to the work of the Krupka Book Art Studio.