This data collection contains the results of the FWF project „Lesen in den Alpen“ (Reading in the Alps), which was dedicated to the topic of rural book ownership in the central Puster Valley between 1750 and 1800. It consists of the edited probate treatises (ed. „Verlassenschaftsabhandlungen“) of clergymen from the central Puster Valley, an index of places, persons and books, statistical analyses of written records of real estate ownership (ed. „Verfachbücher“) with inventories, as well as full texts and short summaries of the "Verfachbücher" and entries. With the exception of the full texts, which are available in MultiPAGE XML format, all data is encoded according to the guidelines of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI).