The London Book Trades Database
The Bibliographical Society has just launched a redesigned version of the London Book Trades Database. The original LBT database was the work of the late Michael Turner at the Bodleian Library, assisted by a number of collaborators, drawing particularly on the archival resources of the Stationers’ Company. A web version of the database was created in 2009 which eventually ran on servers at the Bodleian until it was closed down in 2024 as its software was long past its expiry date.
The Bibliographical Society has taken steps to revive the project, this time as a MediaWiki resource based on a new extraction of the data from the original database created by Michael Turner and a radical redesign of the contents and interface by Council member David Macfarlane. This new version, known as LBT Version 2.0, does not yet contain all the original data, but the people, events, titles, and relationships make it immediately useful. We envisage two or three updates in the coming months as more contents are retrieved and restructured. The new web site has explanatory pages with a full history of the project and its new technical implementation.
In addition to all the famous names of the book trade up to the mid-nineteenth century, entries offer information for more minor figures including family members and apprentices. There are entries for nearly 35,000 people, presenting detailed accounts of the person’s interaction with the Stationers’ Company and data from published sources. Family relationship tables enable the tracing of family dynasties, often through several generations in the trade, by using the links to grandparents, parents, and children, for example the Hansard printing dynasty.
A new feature indexes the street addresses listed in the entries, showing the sequences of occupation of premises by successive firms and offering information about their near neighbours, for example the Longmans and others at 39 Paternoster Row.
We hope that this new wiki will offer scholars and researchers valuable access to the impressive resources which Michael Turner gathered and organised.
David Shaw, Hon. Editor of Electronic Publications
David Macfarlane, Council member
