Our Rhineland department

The Rhineland Department was established in the 19th century with a view to the newly founded Prussian Rhine Province, which comprised large parts of today's federal states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland, as well as the districts of Eupen, Malmedy and St. Vith, which have been Belgian since 1919. Since then, it has collected the literature of all disciplines about this area published in bookshops and outside the book trade. Today, this also includes information available in digital form.

Collections from the Rhineland department

The southern part of the state North Rhine (max. up to the line Viersen - Krefeld - Velbert) can be defined as a "compression zone". The literature published in the book trade is usually purchased here; grey literature, as well as literature from business and administration, leisure guides and maps, or literature updated daily can be dispensed with in the majority of cases. In the rest of the Rhine region (Lower Rhine, Eifel, Middle Rhine Valley to about Koblenz) regional literature is acquired more densely than for the other German landscapes. However, it is no longer possible to speak of a real special collection here, even though a high density is still achieved in the area of periodicals on regional studies.

The Rhenish marginal landscapes beyond the Moselle and Ruhr, the Rhenish part of the Ruhr area, the Westerwald and the Rhine valley south of Koblenz / Rhens form a transitional zone in which the current acquisition of literature no longer differs significantly from that of other German regions.

In terms of content, the focus of the collection today is on literature on history (including specialist histories), geography, folklore, regional language as well as literature and art (cultural studies with a historical orientation). Particular attention is paid to the Rhenish artistic landscape, customs (e.g. carnival and shooting clubs) and Cologne dialect literature.

Due to the exorbitant increase in book production in recent decades, especially in "grey literature", the collection can no longer be collected equally intensively for the entire region. For the city of Cologne and its immediate surroundings, the aim is to be as complete as possible, including company and administrative literature, leisure guides, Cologne crime novels and exhibition catalogues of all kinds. This region can therefore be regarded as the "core zone" of the Rhineland department.

The Rhineland department supports the bibliographic listing of the literature important for the region which it acquires by submitting the relevant titles to the North Rhine-Westphalian bibliography. It also deals with the coloniensias, which are included in Hans Blum's Kölnische Bibliographie (Cologne Bibliography), which has so far only been available in printed form. Both lists also contain titles not indexed or owned by the Rhineland department itself (e.g. articles from journals and anthologies).

Portals of the Rhineland collection

Rhineland Monographs
Rare monographs from the collection of the Rhineland department of the UCL Cologne (also digital)

Rhineland Journals
Magazines and newspapers about Cologne (also digital)

Cologne collection of newspaper clippings 1840 - 1969
Newspaper and magazine articles on topics and people around Cologne and the Rhineland (also digital)

Cologne newspaper article collection
Reporting period: 1970-1984 and 1990-1991.

Publications from the Monschau region
Periodicals with reference to Monschau and the Monschau region (also digital)

Publications of the society for Rhenish history
Publications of the GRHG for the research of the Rhenish history (also digital)