The article indexes and describes Ksawery Działyński’s (1756–1819) book collection. Ksawery developed his library on the basis of the collection he inherited from his predecessors, subsequently buying further items. The collection comprised a total of about 650 works. The turn of the 19th century was the time when the so-called “national book collections” were developed in the Polish lands with a view to the rescuing of Polish library resources. However, an analysis of Ksawery’s stock provides evidence that, being a politically engaged patriot, he collected his books in the spirit of the Enlightenment. Most of the books in the collection are French volumes (77%) and they mainly represent literature, history and history of art, and to a smaller extent science, medicine, and agriculture. The books were to help their owner conduct his political activity and manage his estate, and to provide entertainment. The collection was primarily developed for Ksawery’s own purposes.

Włodzimierz Dworzaczek’s published manuscript entitled “The Raszewski Family Bearing the Grzymała Coat of Arms” is a special work by an eminent genealogist written before WWII, when its author made his living doing research at the request of private individuals. Only his two works of this kind survived until our own times, and both are a part of the collections of the Kórnik Library. Dworzaczek wrote the Raszewski family’s genealogy for General Kazimierz Raszewski from Poznan in 1936, leading the direct line from the end of the 15th century to the general himself (end of the 19th century). Although the manuscript is incomplete (several last pages are missing), its publication is an important and much-needed supplementation to the genealogy of Polish noble families, due to the scant number of publications concerning the Raszewski family.