The microfiche collection "Corvey" contains about half of the Corvey Princely Library, which comprises about 74.000 volumes, and consists of three separate editions which are available in the Paderborn University Library:

• Edition Corvey. - Belser Wissenschaftlicher Dienst, BWD (28.671 microfiches). Content: novels, short stories, travel literature, small prose forms, biographies, essays, writings for children and young people, verse, drama, poetry. - Location/Signature: 93 ZZVC1009- ... (current microfiche no.).
• Corvey Princely Library: non-fiction. - Olms New Media (20.169 microfiches). Contents: geography, statistics and travelogues, modern history, philosophy, natural sciences, medicine, law and theology. - Location/Signature: 93 ZZVC1017- ... (running microfiche no.).
• Corvey Princely Library: Anti-Napoleon. Schriften.- Olms New Media (417 microfiches) . Contents of the edition also called "Anti-Napoleonische Pamphlete" by the publisher: Political writings from the wars of liberation 1813 - 1815. - Location/Signature: 93 ZZVC1025- ... (running microfiche no.).

The importance of the Corvey Princely Library lies not only in an exceptionally dense stock of entertainment literature of the late 18th and early 19th century - popular German, English and French novels - which is of particular interest for literary research (reception research 'trivial literature') and is available elsewhere only to a limited extent, but also in a valuable collection of splendour and view works, especially from the early 19th century.

On the one hand, the holdings go back to Landgrave Viktor Amadeus of Hesse-Rotenburg and his wife Elise, who brought a considerable book collection of around 36.000 volumes to Corvey. On the other hand, in the second half of the 19th century it was August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben who, as librarian to the Duke of Ratibor, the heir of Landgrave Viktor Amadeus, expanded the collection with valuable and rare individual volumes, splendid volumes and scientific literature.

Between 1985 and 1999, Paderborn University made the holdings of the Princely Library accessible to scholars as part of a project funded by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Fritz Thyssen Foundation. For this purpose, a contract was signed in 1985 between the owner of the Princely Library and the Ministry of Science and Research of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, represented by the Rectorate of Paderborn University, and the project management. It made possible the cataloguing under the auspices of the Paderborn University Library, the partial publishing in cooperation with the publishers Belser Wissenschaftlicher Dienst (BWD) and Olms as well as the scholarly indexing of the library.

The printed alphabetical catalogue of the holdings, consisting of seven volumes and an index volume, was handed over to the owner, Franz Albrecht Metternich-Sandor, Duke of Ratibor and Prince of Corvey, by NRW Education Minister Gabriele Behler in 1999. The Corvey holdings are also listed in the hbz-Verbunddatenbank der nordrhein-westfälischen Bibliotheken. They are marked with the library symbol 110 (110-HX:-Fürstl.-B-Corvey) and can be searched via this in the hbz union catalogue.

Microfiches from the three editions are available at Paderborn University Library on request via local lending (or via order by interlibrary loan). The printed catalogue entitled "Historische Bestände der Fürstlichen Bibliothek Corvey" can be consulted in the subject library level 3 of the University Library (location/signature 08 AACS1010- ... volume no. ; level 3, shelf 110).

Part of the "Beautiful Literature" of the Corvey Princely Library contained in the Corvey Edition has also been available in the form of e-books since 2006, together with numerous other electronic information media for which "national licences" have been acquired with special funding from the DFG. For more information on access via the university network or personal individual registration, please refer to the information in the database information system (DBIS) of the University Library.

• German Language Women's Literature of the 18th & 19th Century, Part 1 (129 e-books)
• English Language Women's Literature of the 18th & 19th Centuries (1.529 e-books)
• Wales related Fiction of the Romantic Period (86 e-books)

Detailed information on Corvey Castle can be found at: www.corvey.de