Structure of the Vatican Library collections
The Vatican Film Library preserves the Vatican Library’s organizational structure of its individual manuscript collections, or fondi. The core group of Vatican manuscripts is known as the “Vatican” collection (Vaticani latini, Vaticani greci, etc.), while various other collections were named for their former owners or their places of origin. Subdivided by language, the “Vatican” collection is open and continues to expand with new acquisitions, contrasting with the other collections, which are closed and for the most part retain their original elements. All Vatican Library manuscripts are distinguished sequentially within the assorted collections by letters of the alphabet and/or numbers, which represent an item’s individual identity and are an integral component of its call number or shelfmark.

All Vatican Library manuscripts on microfilm held by the Vatican Film Library are available for the use of the public in the our reading room only. Microfilms do not circulate and may not be requested via interlibrary loan. If you are unable to visit our library, and need to order a reproduction, you will need to contact the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana directly.

Non-Vatican collections
There are currently around 2,500 non-Vatican Library manuscripts on microfilm in the Vatican Film Library, and we continue to add to this collection. These microfilms represent manuscripts in institutions all over Europe, from Assisi to Vienna. The format of their shelfmarks varies according to each repository; some have named collections, within which each manuscript has a unique sequence of numbers and/or letters of the alphabet; others have only alpha-numerical designations.

Shelfmark
All manuscript repositories have individual classification systems for their collections. In order to locate a particular manuscript it must be properly identified by its shelfmark, which is made up of various parts. The shelfmark consists of the following, in this order:

• City or town in which the repository is located


• Institutional name of the repository


• Collection name (if one exists)


• Language (when language subdivisions are used)


• Particular configuration of alphabetical and numerical characters assigned to the individual codex

Examples:

• Vienna (city), Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (repository), Theol. gr. (collection name and language), 31 (number)


• Vatican City (city), Biblioteca apostolica vaticana (repository), Urb. lat. (collection name and language) 345 (number)


• London (city), British Library (repository), Royal (collection), 5.E.XI (number)

N.B.: Numbers that incorporate disparate elements, such as Arabic numbers, letters of the alphabet, and roman numerals are separated by periods, without spaces.