The advanced use of digital technologies, the existence of freely accessible structured knowledge bases, the increasing level of standardization and the needs of the scientific community offer those who process bibliographical data qualitatively new options for processing such data. In line with current trends in accessing scientific data, which are also reflected in the development of scientific policies (FAIR principles, open science, linkable open data, etc.), the issue of the re-use of existing datasets is gaining in importance. The present text uses the example of the Literarybibliography.eu portal to indicate the options for creating an international subject bibliography for literary studies from existing data sources, while discussing both the theoretical concept behind the project and the technological and methodological issues involved in the creation of such a bibliography, especially the harmonization and further enhancement of the source data.