Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden

With around 53,000 holdings - from monographs to audiovisual media - the Stenographic Collection represents the 2,000-year history of stenography. It is the world's largest and most important specialist library of its kind. Its history is closely linked to the development of parliamentary stenography in Saxony.

The holdings of the Stenographic Collection primarily include monographs, periodicals and manuscripts. In addition, there are original stenographs, commercial prints, portraits, audiovisual media and various material items.

In addition to literature on shorthand, the collection also includes writings on typing, word processing and office management, as well as individual titles on writing, linguistics and political science. In addition, the Stenographic Collection has an extensive foreign language section, which makes up about a quarter of the total holdings. It lists works in 52 languages. In total, titles from six centuries, from the 16th century to the present, are recorded.

• the textbook collection as the core of the Stenographic Collection: almost complete possession of all first editions of German shorthand textbooks, from the geometric shorthand systems to the German Standard Shorthand
• the collection of Old English works of the 17th and 18th centuries with a total of 85 titles - 78 of them original editions - on the beginnings of modern shorthand
• the manuscript collection with autographs of almost all important German shorthand inventors, above all with original letters by Franz Xaver Gabelsberger
• the numerous written bequests of well-known stenographers and stenography scholars, such as Felix von Kunowski and Christian Johnen.

The individual holdings are arranged in subject groups according to a special system. They are indexed by means of various catalogues. Selected works on stenography can also be accessed as full texts within the framework of the digital collections.