Oxford researchers are now invited to trial ZEDHIA. The trial can be accessed from OxLIP+.
ZEDHIA resource provides historical business information from the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and its successor and partly neighbouring states. This includes the areas of modern Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania and many more until 1945 and more complete information restricted to Austria afterwards. It currently covers 1812 to 2003.
The backbone of the database are the Compass yearbooks covering 1868- 2000 and the Zentralblatt für die Eintragungen ins Handelsregister (commercial register entries) covering 1904-2001. It gives access to depth-structured, digitised, full-text resources in the fields of Central European financial, economic and trade history and genealogy. There is also much information on local villages, town, their geography and population.
Amongst others, the Compass periodical also includes
- calendars of national and international importance, e.g. solar eclipses, innovations, religious calendars.
- directories and dates of markets in Germany, Austria, Hungary
- information on the postal system, e.g. how post is sent from Austria to any part of the world and how much it costs.
- information on the finances, branches and staffing of the Austrian national bank and other financial institutions
- information on transport companies (rail, shipping), their finances, staffing and official notices
- information customs and excise procedures
Zentralblatt für die Eintragungen ins Handelsregister is particularly useful to trace any retail, financial or commercial enterprise and its owner(s).
Also included in ZEDHIA is Der Tresor: Revue, Statistik und Archiv für Volkswirtschaft und Finanzwesen (1872-1919), a weekly periodical which focused on Austro-Hungarian stock companies and government securities. There were regular and highly detailed financial, statistical and economic analyses as well as in-depth reports on economic and political developments in Austria-Hungary and around the world. Der Tresor is also selectively freely available online at ANNO (Austrian Newspaper Online).
As well as finding information relating to business and commerce, the digitised periodicals also include interesting advertisements of banks, businesses, schools, products for industry agriculture or the home, etc.
You can search and browse in many different ways, applying filters to narrow down your search. The interface can be displayed in either German or English though all the content and the metadata describing the publications are in German.
Please send feedback to isabel.holowaty@bodleian.ox.ac.uk by 15 March 2018.