Jakob Wichner entered the Abbey of Admont in 1846 and, as the abbey's archivist and librarian, compiled extensive catalogues. His main scholarly work is the four-volume History of the Benedictine Abbey of Admont. In total, the Admont Benedictine was the author of 87 publications, 52 of which appeared in academic journals. Modern archival practices at the Abbey of Admont can be traced back to him, and his research on manuscript collections remains fundamental. His work culminated in an 1888 handwritten catalogue of the Admont Codices. According to a handwritten note, the 1893 catalogue lists 1,103 manuscripts in the abbey's collection, about two-thirds of which date from the Middle Ages, with the remainder from the early modern period.

A photograph by the Fankhauser Studio, significant for the history of photography in the Styrian Enns Valley, shows the Admont monk at the age of 72, described as the abbey's 19th librarian. Born in Graz, Jakob Wichner took his monastic vows on July 11, 1851, during the tenure of Abbot Benno Kreil OSB, and celebrated his first mass on August 10, 1851. After serving as a chaplain in St. Michael ob Leoben and St. Lorenzen im Paltental, he became parish vicar in Kleinsölk, and later, in 1866, in Ardning, where he began writing parish chronicles.

From 1870 to 1903, he served as the abbey's librarian and archivist, reorganizing the archives into 121 subcategories, after a great fire hit the monastery in 1865. Father Jakob Wichner received numerous honors, including an honorary doctorate in theology from the University of Würzburg and the grand gold medal for art and science. After his death on October 21, 1903, at the age of 76, the Historische Verein für Steiermark commemorated him in the Steirische Zeitschrift für Geschichte (1903, Issue 3) with these words: 

Father Jakob Wichner’s Manuscript Catalogue (Catalogus codicum manu scriptorum Admontensis) was completed on September 21, 1888. The catalogue comprises (in modern pagination) 396 large folio pages.

In addition to descriptions of over 1,100 medieval and early modern manuscripts, with details on folio count, material, and size, the catalogue includes extensive indexes: an author list, a register of scribes, an alphabetical subject index, an overview of manuscripts containing documents, a provenance index, a catalogue of the most artistically significant manuscripts, a chronological register of manuscripts, and an index of tractate incipits. These registers remain essential tools for manuscript research at Admont Abbey.

After Father Jakob Wichner, the handwritten catalogue was also used to document entries and comments of relevance to ownership history, added by later archivists and librarians. For instance, a notation in the left margin beside the description of Codex 834a mentions that the work is "missing," to which a later hand responds with "present!" Other notations, as in the case of other manuscripts, indicate that a manuscript was restored and given a new binding. Codex 834a includes a description by Father Benedikt Hammerschall of the former baroque abbey church, destroyed after the 1865 fire that hit the abbey, thus providing insights into the historical furnishings of Admont Abbey. 

This is only one of 269 early modern manuscripts digitised for the project. Among this collection are significant subcollections, such as handwritten school dramas (e.g., Cod. 35/42, Cod. 35/43, Cod. 35/44, Cod. 35/45, Cod. 35/46, Cod. 35/47, Cod. 35/48, Cod. 35/50, Cod. 35/55, Cod. 35/56, Cod. 35/57, Cod. 35/58, Cod. 35/59, Cod. 35/60, Cod. 35/61, Cod. 35/62), lecture notes by the future abbot Urban Weber OSB (Cod. 808g, Cod. 884, Cod. 921, Cod. 948, Cod. 949, Cod. 950), sermon collectanea (Cod. 314a, Cod. 888, Cod. 890, Cod. 907), and much more.