Rare Books & Special Collections

Five databases chronicling the history of print culture in Canada. The website contains comprehensive bibliographic, geographic, and biographic data about Canada's print culture from its beginnings in the sixteenth century to the twenty-first century.

The Atlas of Early Printing is an interactive site designed to be used as a tool for teaching the early history of printing in Europe during the second half of the fifteenth century

American Book Prices Current is an annual record of books, manuscripts, autographs, maps and broadsides sold at auction. Regions covered include North America and the UK, and sales from select countries, including Switzerland, Germany, Monaco, Holland, Australia. It is the standard tool used by dealers, appraisers, auction houses, scholars and tax authorities.

The BAL provides nearly 40,000 records of the literary works of approximately 300 American writers from the period of the Revolution to 1930.

The Bibliographical Society of America's BibSite functions as a service to bibliographers by offering a means for scholars to provide public access to accumulated bibliographical research materials that may be useful to other researchers.

The Bibliographical Society of Canada is a bilingual (English/French) organization that has as its goal the scholarly study of the history, description, and transmission of texts in all media and formats, with a primary emphasis on Canada

The Web's most complete bibliographic resource for the conservation, preservation and restoration of cultural property. A worldwide network of libraries and documentation centres contribute data on their combined holdings, including previously unavailable material from private sources, to the BCIN database.

The Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions (CIHM) is a collection of publications dating back to the early 17th century that are about Canada, or written and published by Canadians.This CIHM digital archive begins with pre-1900 non-serial materials and continues forward to 1920. Digitization will be ongoing until completed with new titles added regularly.

Hankins J. Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum: Medieval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries, vol. 9. (Virginia Brown E-in-C, James Hankins AE, Robert A. Kaster AE). Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press; 2011.

DEEP: Database of Early English Playbooks allows scholars and students to investigate the publishing, printing, and marketing of English Renaissance drama in ways not possible using any other print or electronic resource. An easy-to-use and highly customizable search engine of every playbook produced in England, Scotland, and Ireland from the beginning of printing through 1660, DEEP provides a wealth of information about the original playbooks, their title-pages, paratextual matter, advertising features, bibliographic details, and theatrical backgrounds.

The successor to CIHM, Early Canadiana Online contains Early Canadian Periodicals one of the 11 collections contained in this project to identify, digitize, archive, and provide access to material published from the time of the first European settlers to the first four decades of the 20th Century.

EEBO provides access to some 125,000 titles published before 1700, based on microfilms series of Early English Books listed in Pollard Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1465-1640) and Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700). EEBO includes the Thomason Tracts, a collection of broadsides and pamphlets printed between 1640 and 1661.

Early Modern Letters Online is a combined finding aid and editorial interface for basic descriptions of early modern correspondence: a collaboratively populated union catalogue of sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth-century letters.

Eigthteenth-Century Collections Online provides access to the digital images of every page of 150,000 books published during the 18th Century. Once all modules are in place, ECCO will allow full-text searching of approximately 33 million pages, the product allows researchers new methods of access to critical information in the fields of history, literature, religion, law, fine arts, science and more. Current modules are: History and Geography, Fine Arts and Social Sciences; Medicine, Science and Technology; Literature and Language.

The English Short-Title Catalogue (ESTC) is a bibliographic database which, when complete, will contain a record for every letterpress item printed in England or any of its dependencies, in any language, from 1473-1800, or in English anywhere else in the world during that period. In order to increase access to these items, each record includes a list of all libraries known to hold copies of the item, as well as references to microfilm and other facsimile versions.

The Full English contains over 44,000 records and over 58,000 digitised images from the archives of 19 of the most important and influential collectors in the UK.

The Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke is an ongoing project of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin to publish a union catalog of incunabula.

Dictionnaires, grammaires et encyclopédies, avec Grand Corpus des dictionnaires [du 9e au 20e siècle].

HathiTrust Digital Library is a digital preservation repository and highly functional access platform. HathiTrust provides long-term preservation and access services to digitized content from a variety of sources, including Google, the Internet Archive, Microsoft, and in-house member institution initiatives. Items in the public domain are in full-view for everyone and items held in copyright are searchable.

Jeremy Norman's History of Medicine is an interactive annotated bibliography of the history of medicine, biology and dentistry from circa 2000 BCE to circa 2000.

The Hymn Tune Index is a comprehensive census of tunes associated with English-language hymns found in sources printed on or before 1820.

The Incunabula Short Title Catalogue is the international database of 15th-century European printing created by the British Library with contributions from institutions worldwide.

The Language of Bindings Thesaurus is a thesaurus of bookbinding terms for book structures dating from the ninth to the nineteenth century.

The Oxford DNB - 55,000 biographies of people who shaped the history of the British Isles and beyond, from the earliest times to the year 2003.

The Short Title Catalogue Netherlands is the Dutch retrospective bibliography for the period 1540-1800. For books printed in Flanders you can search the corresponding Flemish database, the Short Title Catalogue Vlaanderen.

Das Verzeichneis der im deutschen Sprachraum ershienenen Drucke des 16 Jahrhunderts (VD16), is the standard bibliography of 16th-century German imprints. The search interface (in German), provides access to some 100,000 entries included in the printed bibliography and its supplements.

Das Verzeichnis der im deutschen Sprachraum erschienenen Drucke des 17. Jahrhunderts (VD17), intends to establish a German National Bibliography of 17th century imprints. All German titles and all titles which have been printed or published in former German-speaking countries will be catalogued. Only printed music and maps are excluded. To improve bibliographic information, digitized images of keypages are added to the catalog records. In March 2004, the database contained about 200,000 entries. It is updated several times per day.

"This project promotes ongoing work in women's book history by providing a hub where scholarship and resources on women's writing and labor is made visible." --Our Mission, Women in Book History