Abstract
This paper attempts to present the literary studies community amongst others with the current state of the national retrospective bibliography and related issues, and to initiate a debate on the subject. The introduction defines the term "national retrospective bibliography" and subsequently presents a comparative summary of European retrospective bibliographies, their electronic processing and the provision of access to them, with particular attention being paid to Central Europe.
Attention then focuses on the Czech national retrospective bibliography, its structure (i.e. its division into separate individual projects) and in particular its current technical and methodological issues, for which a definition is attempted and a possible solution is offered.