The Bibliographical Society is pleased to welcome the announcement of the relaunch of the English Short-Title Catalogue (ESTC), now accessible on the servers of the Consortium of European Research Libraries (CERL). The ESTC team is delighted to launch the Beta version of the new English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC), the [...]
Cambridge Bookbinding 1450-1770 Cambridge has been a centre of book-making for as long as it has maintained a university. Over one hundred named bookbinders are known to have worked there between the 15th and 18th centuries, and, although examples of their work have travelled far and wide, many others have [...]
Anthony Hobson, DECORATED BOOKBINDINGS in Renaissance Italy Outside Rome and Venice - A Catalogue Edited by Edward Potten and Mirjam Foot; Preface by Christopher de Hamel An essential reference for anyone interested in the history of bookbinding in the Italian Renaissance. Anthony Hobson (1921-2014), former Director of Sotheby's and past [...]
Lewis Carroll Resources Lewis Carroll (1832—1898) is best known as the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), its sequel Through The Looking Glass (1865) and his poems Jabberwocky and The Hunting of the Snark. Carroll’s creative output was enormous: a noted mathematician, he published on linear algebra, probability and the study of election under [...]
From time to time the Society awards a Gold Medal for distinguished services to bibliography to individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to the development of the subject and the furtherance of the Society’s aims. Over forty awards have been made since the Medal Fund was established in 1929 [...]
Fragmentarium: Laboratory for Medieval Manuscript Fragments Inspired by the Council’s Choice for January 2025 (Digital Scriptorium), I would like to highlight another online resource for the study of medieval manuscript culture. Fragmentarium, begun as a trial project in 2015, is a consortial portal and database that ‘enables libraries, collectors, researchers [...]
On Thursday, 27 February, at 17.00 GMT, the Bibliographical Society travels virtually to visit the library at St Catherine’s Monastery, Mt Sinai. The virtual visit will take place on Zoom and will comprise a pre-recorded introduction to the library and its collections, followed by live discussion and Q&A. Our host [...]
Seized Books! An online exhibition. I am delighted to recommend the Seized Books online exhibition, even if it may seem a shameless opportunity to promote my own institution, Senate House Library. Senate House Library was bequeathed the collection of Jonathan Cutbill (1937-2019), one of the founder members of Gays the [...]
Mon 17th February 2025 6:30PM Join Middle Temple Library and Ana Sáez-Hidalgo for a fascinating virtual library tour of the Library of Royal English College of St Alban in Valladolid, led by its rector, Fr. John Flyn, and its librarian, Blanca Mateo. This will be followed by a talk about [...]
What does it mean to think about matter and materiality through the medium of letterpress printing? We invite scholars of matter, materiality and/or material culture (broadly conceived) in any discipline, and at any career stage (including graduate students), to apply to our 2025 summer school: Print Matters. Supported by the [...]
Digital Scriptorium As a new Council member, I’d like to highlight the Digital Scriptorium as an increasingly indispensable portal into North American repositories of medieval and early modern manuscripts. It has the potential to become a national union catalogue, with 15,000 records from 37 member institutions’ collections currently available and [...]
Book fittings recorded on the Portable Antiquities Database My Presidential Address to the Bibliographical Society earlier this year (19 March 2024) included details of the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) database: https://finds.org.uk/ My intention was to draw attention to this well designed and enormous database which might offer suggestions of how [...]
