The Imperial-Royal Institute for Higher Education of Secular Priests of Saint Augustine (also called Frintaneum or Augustineum) was founded in 1816 by Emperor Franz I. at the suggestion of Jakob Frint, rector of the Court and Castle. Until 1918, it served as institute for the theological advanced training for the higher service (completed with the doctoral degree) of 1096 clergymen in the Habsburg Empire. Originally situated in St. Augustine’s Monastery in Vienna (the basic holdings of the Frintaneum library derive from the monastery’s library), it was located in the Habsburgergasse from 1914.
As their final project thesis, two graduates of the university training course Library and Information Studies 2011/2012, Ms. Sarah Fiedler und Mag. Anna Ransmayr, treated this collection with two purposes: (i) the description of the library’s state of preservation as well as of the existing catalogues and inventories in order to improve the accessibility and usability of the books, and (ii) the statistical evaluation of the historical catalogue in order to support the research project on the Frintaneum at the Institute for Church History at the Roman-Catholic Theological Faculty.
