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STN Online Database Archive

List of Manuscripts

books clients places

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The following chart gives a complete listing of the documents from the Bibliothèque publique et universitaire de Neuchâtel that have been used to recreate the orders of the STN in this database.

Documents were consulted following to a strict hierarchy according to the quality of data that they contained for a given period. First preference was given to the Brouillards (also known as Journals, Copies des comptes, and in draft form, Mains courantes followed by the Rencontres. Both these sources in theory give all purchases and sales by the STN over a given period. Where these documents were not available, Livres de Commissions were consulted, where they existed, but these only give partial sales records. To fill the brief chronological gaps where none of these sources were available, the individual correspondence dossiers of book trade clients whose correspondence spanned the hiatus, in search of documents providing what we called ‘solid accounting evidence’ – proof positive that a book was not only ordered but delivered on a certain date.

In addition, any documents that might provide supplementary data were consulted, and these include the surviving petty cash books Caisse, records of small account holders, menus débiteurs, lists of books held on the STN’s account etc.. One particularly important source for a period when other documentation was almost entirely lacking was the dossier (MS 1145) of the STN agent Durand’s sales tour between July 1787 and November 1788.