Polska bibliografia organów by Prof. Maria Szymanowicz as a Tool for Organ Studies

The above article presenting Polska bibliografia organów published since 2011 by Prof. Maria Szymanowicz, also partly captures the reaction to the published work of musicologists and organologists as well as bibliographers. It is also an attempt to justify that the publication, even if not free from methodological shortcomings and small deficiencies, is still a valuable, useful and even necessary tool in the hands of Polish researchers on subjects related to organs. The presented article consists of four points, introduction, ending and bibliography list. The first point discusses the substantive value of the so-called domain bibliographies, which from the bibliographers' point of view are a valuable element of organizing knowledge. It is important to see from this point the real value of Bibliografia by M. Szymanowicz. After all, Polska bibliografia organów is indeed a kind of domain bibliography. Creating a bibliography in a given field also increases the importance of the discipline and adds to its development. The second point presents the biography and scientific achievements of Prof. Maria Szymanowicz, who, along her scientific career, was the director of the Institute of Musicology at the Catholic University of Lublin and continues to be the head of the Department of Instrumentology. Her field of interest are organ construction, liturgical music and religious musical culture. Her scientific achievements include 7 book publications, over 40 scientific articles and several encyclopedic entries. Nearly 40 years of scientific work also resulted in the promotion of 7 and reviews of 9 doctorates. She is the promoter of over 30 bachelor theses and over 40 master's theses. In addition to that, thanks to many years of her cooperation with Ośrodek Dokumentacji Zabytków (the Monument Documentation Centre) in Warsaw and restoration centers, M. Szymanowicz made at least 170 inventories of historic organs. All these activities make it clear that M. Szymanowicz has full competence to create a bibliography. The third point contains a discussion of the published volumes of Polska bibliografia organów and their sources of inspiration that date back to 1980. It is when the author came across the published bibliography of organs by the German author Rudolf Reuter. Since then, when conducting a query, she collected materials for the future implementation of the idea of developing a Polish bibliography of organs. The first volume was published in 2011, the second in 2014 and the third in 2018. They cover a total of 2,500 items. A detailed description of the methodology of work and the division of materials is included in the description of the Reviews section. Generally, the work of Prof. Szymanowicz arouse great enthusiasm of experts on the subject and the same could be expected from biographers, but on the contrary it met with criticism of the methodology of work expressed by the bibliographer Jakub M. Łubocki. The fourth point is an attempt to identify several elements of the discussed work as a real tool in the hands of organology experts. The publication is an exploratory, cognitive and inspirational tool which broadens mental horizons and emphasizes the status of organology as a separate field of knowledge. The final part discusses the friendly acceptance of Polska bibliografia organów by M. Szymanowicz by all organ scholars and how it met with criticism from the bibliographer. Of course, one can question some of the methods taken up by the author at the beginning of her work, but its general values and the competence of the author or her work cannot be diminished. What she did was truly a “Benedictine work.” In the ending, a few problems are also highlighted which are involved in the process of creating this type of bibliography. Firstly, the literature on the subject is expanding dramatically, and secondly, there is a growing interest in bibliographies published in electronic media, i.e. using digital techniques and involving the operation of computers or other mobile devices. Therefore, it is likely that there will come a moment when work on the bibliography of organs will be raised to a higher level using information systems, which would entail the need to change the methodology of work. This is always possible, especially since the most difficult and arduous work related to source queries has already been done