All sorts of print orders
Historic prints for daily use pose great challenges to libraries and archives. The conservation and indexing of these collections is complex, but we are often rewarded with great treasures of sociohistorical significance. Unopened time capsules, so to speak.
The print sample collection Haller is made up of several thousand samples of orders, which the printing company Haller executed between 1800 and 1959 for private customers, for trade and commerce, and for church and state. Originally, Ludwig Albrecht Haller (1773-1837) and later is son, Bernhard Friedrich Haller (1800-1871), had all their print orders filed in approx. 200 tomes. They contained circus posters, tobacco packaging, official government documentation, business cards, door signs, forms, advertisements, price lists, bidding cards, occasional poetry, prohibitions, and epitaphs.
It is not recorded how or when the collection became part of the former city library of Bern (the University Library Bern today). In the 1920s, head librarian Hans Bloesch (1878-1945) discovered the vast collection of print samples. He recognised their sociohistorical significance, restructured part of the samples according to their content, and authored publications on the subject. The majority of the collection stayed in the original tomes. Almost 100 years later, from 2017 to 2019, the print samples were indexed, conserved, partly digitised, and are now available for research purposes.