History
Database
Access
Enquiries
History
The need for the riches of the College libraries to be more widely known was first stated almost 350 years ago. There have been a number of attempts to rectify this deficiency, but it was not until 1929 that there began the initiative that provided the foundations for the current project. At a meeting of the Oxford Bibliographical Society, it was proposed that a union catalogue of pre-1641 books in Oxford College libraries should be created. This was compiled by means of each relevant catalogue, or a copy thereof, being deposited at the Bodleian and copies of entries for these books were typed onto cards and interfiled.
Work continued through the 1930s and there were several reports which stated that the Inter-Collegiate Catalogue (ICC) was almost ready for printing. However, the file remained on cards until the 1950s when the records for British imprints and English books printed abroad were removed for inclusion in Pollard and Redgrave's Short Title Catalogue (STC).
In the 1970s the records for the foreign books were converted into machine-readable form. In the following decade some entries in the file were checked against the books themselves, but on the whole the file remained as a copy of early catalogue records, which were often of limited value for identifying the work in hand, being inaccurate or incomplete. A few print-outs of the file were made, but their existence has been largely unknown. During the next 25 years, the file itself was refreshed and migrated to maintain its currency.
With the advent of the Follett Report and the offer of HEFCE Non-Formula Funding for Special Collections, the University of Oxford put forward the ICC file as a project for funding. A grant was made by HEFCE to fund the project initially for one year, and then for a subsequent 15 months. The Early Printed Books Project began with a team of six cataloguers who started work in June 1995, and used the original ICC file as a management database and initial finding tool for the project.
Funding for the Early Printed Books Project from HEFCE came to an end in September 1997 and for two years the project was solely reliant upon the goodwill of the University and Colleges. In August 1999 the project was awarded funding for three years from the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP) specifically to catalogue foreign books printed between 1641 and 1800. This project, entitled Charting the European Printed Heritage 1641-1800, aims to catalogue a further 19,000 post-1641 foreign titles, in 18 Oxford libraries. Additional funding in May 2000 has allowed work to begin on cataloguing a further 6,600 pre-1641 foreign items unique in Oxford. Today, the project employs 8 full-time and 3 part-time staff, including a full-time project manager and a team of antiquarian cataloguers.
Our goal remains to raise awareness of these collections within the HE sector in order to promote access to them and to release their full potential. Provision of a unified point of access to the many disparate early collections in Oxford will be a major step in achieving this goal. Adding these resources to COPAC will lay the foundation for the creation of a union catalogue of all early foreign printed books in UK research libraries.
The project has an office in the Libraries Automation Service, but the team spend most of their time out in various Oxford libraries. Laptop computers provide our link to external databases and other online resources. When we enter a library to work on the books, the first problem is ensuring that there is the requisite technology to support our work. It is not always easy to find an Ethernet port close to the rare book stacks. In two colleges to date we have had to run extension leads from rooms nearby, out of windows and into their old libraries, with varying degrees of success!
Database
We continue to maintain a separate database of the ICC file which contains 34,000 records, reflecting about 60,000 books, housed in 70 different collections. Some collections hold just one foreign book of the period, Christ Church has 6,366. Of the 34,000, 22440 are to be found at only a single Oxford location, a few very common items have more than 15 locations and just 1 is held in 23 locations in Oxford. (Henri Estienne's Thesaurus Graecae Linguae, 1572).
The original purpose of the database was to provide a means of working more efficiently around the collections for the cataloguers. However the file has been further manipulated, and the database redesigned to allow a greater degree of interrogation. The data of course remains brief and largely insufficient for bibliographical queries, but it is now possible to run more enumerative searches. It is consequently easier to find specific items where the author is unknown; large scale queries can be run to give listings of the works of particular authors; and those shelfmarks which are entered (a very small minority in only a handful of colleges) can be included in such lists.
Cataloguing standards
The EPB Project aims to catalogue to the highest standards, in order to facilitate accurate identification of specific items. Authority files are used to ensure that names are drawn together, however many variants are apparent on title pages and in colophons. Names are entered not only for the main author of a work, but also for editors, translators, illustrators, engravers, printers and publishers (where these are known). Library of Congress subject headings are included. Places of printing are included both in the form that appears on the title page or in the colophon, as well as in a standardised hierarchical place name, so that items printed in any given location can be drawn together in a single search.
Access
Cataloguing is done directly onto OLIS (Oxford Libraries Information System), and the records are therefore immediately available. In addition to this, all the records are exported to COPAC, the online public access catalogue of CURL (the Consortium of University and Research Libraries) and the Heritage of the Printed Book Database (previously called the Hand Press Book Database) maintained by CERL (Consortium of European Research Libraries). These records are available both to researchers, and to other cataloguers for downloading.
All libraries involved in this project are open to bona fide researchers. In most cases this will be by prior appointment only. Researchers intending to apply for access to a library are urged to contact them before making a visit. If possible readers should bring a valid Bodleian or British Library reader's card to serve as identification. Postgraduate students should also bring a letter of introduction from their supervisor.
More information about Oxford Libraries, and OLIS can be found at Oxford University Library Information.
Enquiries
Answering queries, supporting the work of antiquarian cataloguers, and advising on similar projects has been made possible by the accumulation of experience, resources, and access to resources. The EPB team is working in many Oxford college libraries facilitating access to printed reference works, and the web site lists many of the most useful online sources. The project itself is becoming a resource which we are keen to make more widely known, and more extensively used. Any queries may be directed to the address below.
Early Printed Books Project
Email: EPB-Admin@las.ox.ac.uk
Last Modified: Thursday May 22 2003