The English Short Title Catalogue 1473‐1800 contains more than 24,000 of the total 35,000 records for the period 1473‐1640 and more than 50,000 of the approximately 92,000 records for the period 1641‐1700 and about 326,000 records from the ESTC file. It aims “to provide a comprehensive bibliography of the printed output of the hand‐press era, to list the whereabouts of surviving copies, and to note the existence of facsimiles”. It covers the same material as represented in Pollard, A.W. and Redgrave, G.R., A Short‐Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland and Ireland and of English Books Printed Abroad 1475‐1640. 2nd ed. rev. & enl. (1986) and Wing, Donald, Short‐Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and British America and of English books Printed in Other Countries 1641‐1700. 2nd ed. rev. & enl. (1988). It is also a unified database, built over several decades, of British and British colonial printing to 1800, representing the holdings of over 1,500 libraries around the world. This CD‐ROM is a work in progress, including all the material processed up to December 1997. Future editions can be expected to include records, locations, and other data not present here.
The product’s scope extends from the earliest printing in England (ca. 1473) to the end of December 1800 and covers all relevant items printed in the British Isles in any language; all relevant items printed in Colonial America, the USA (1776‐1800), and Canada in any language; all relevant items printed in territories governed by Britain during any period [through 1800] in any language; all relevant items, printed wholly or partly in English, or other British vernaculars, in any other part of the world (R. C. Alston and M. J. Jannetta, Bibliography, Machine Readable Cataloguing and the ESTC, The British Library, London, 1978, p.16). It also includes records for items which purport to be British but do not fall within the defined geographic and linguistic scope, such as thousands of foreign language items of continental origin bearing false London imprints. The CD includes these items with notes giving the true place of printing where this can be ascertained.
Researchers can search or browse 27 indices to identify or locate titles. These include: keyword in title, key phrase, personal author, corporate author, keyword in corporate author, author all, title, country of publication, place of publication, keyword in imprint, date of publication, keyword in general notes, keyword in references, notes all, microfilm details, keyword, ESTC record number, language of publication, genre (advertisement, almanacs, directories, prospectuses, single‐sheet verse), library British, library North America, library other, library all, personal name as subject, corporate name as subject, title as subject, and keyword in subject heading. As if this weren’t enough, there’s also the ability to combine searches.
A researcher can enter terms into the Enter Search Query window or open the appropriate index, select a term from the index, and copy it into the Enter Search Query window. With each successive keystroke, the cursor moves to the first word in the index that matches the keystroke combinations. Selecting more than one term will automatically combine the terms using OR when they are copied to the Enter Search Query window. Only records for pre‐1701 imprints have subject headings assigned; so those interested in retrieving records for eighteenth century items should not search by subject. Many of the indices support phrase searching by entering the first word and truncating at the end.
In addition to the Boolean operators (AND, OR and ANDNOT), researchers can use logical operators (= equals, < less than, > greater than, <= less than or equal to, >= greater than or equal to) and proximity or adjacency operators (NEARx and WITHx). Boolean operators can serve to combine terms from the same index or from different indices.
Novices or inexperienced users can select a Form Search to create a structured search of the indices by entering the terms into an on‐screen form. The form consists of windows arranged in three sections corresponding to the index names, query window for entering search terms, and operators. Clicking on the arrow button to the right of the box opens a pop‐up menu for changing the default selections. One can save queries from either the Search or Form Search windows to be run against the ESTC disc during the same session or at a later date. This is useful to carry out a complicated search on a regular basis.
After executing a search, one can view brief or full records. Brief records consist of: the first author, the control number, the publication date, and all or part of the title. The records display alphabetically by author, subarranged by title. The default display for Full Records is the one set when installing ESTC on CD‐ROM. One can change the current display format and save or print records in any available format. One selects records from the Brief Record screen for viewing on the Full Record screen which identifies the number of records currently selected and the number of the record currently being viewed and highlights search terms in black. Clicking the Next or Previous buttons will move back and forth between the records.
The standard display format shows only the main elements of a record. The detailed format shows the full information for each record with a description of each field on the left of the display which facilitates viewing. One can also create a Custom format and revise it at any time during the search session.
The records provide more detailed bibliographic description than the printed versions of Pollard and Redgrave or Wing. They include descriptive notes peculiar to the work on which the entry is base, such as signature or annotation or variant spellings as well as notes on microfilm copies all searchable. They even list locations where copies of the item described may be found. Libraries are divided into three geographical regions: British Isles, North America, and Other. Library symbols are unique only within each geographical grouping. For example, the symbol O could represent either the Bodleian Library as a British location or Ohio State Library as a North American one. One could use these library indices to find the code to which a library refers or to find the name of the library to which a code refers.
The form of the name of North American libraries varies from that of the UK and Other libraries. North American libraries appear as the name of the institution, followed by its location, whereas the UK and Other libraries appear as the location of the library, followed by its name.
When viewing records, researchers can create bookmarks to annotate them with comments which will display whenever they access the record. They can also use the Hyperlink feature to select between one and five terms from the record and use them to search the indices. Double clicking on a term will select it and change the text color to red as an easy visual indicator. The selected term(s) will appear in the Search for box. One then selects the index to search by clicking on its name. One can use the Boolean operators AND or OR to combine all the terms (and) or to find each occurrence of the terms (or).
Researchers can define the layout of the page and the way in which records are printed by either clicking the Page Setup button on the Print screen, or by selecting File from the menu bar and selecting one of the Page Layout options, depending on whether they want to print brief or full records. The Page Layout screen for printing full records also contains some format options allowing users to choose whether they want to print each record on a new page (one record per page) or print them one after another (continuous printing). This determines the number of blank lines between records.
We have already mentioned that the English Short Title Catalogue 1473‐1800 provides more detailed bibliographic information than the printed versions of Pollard and Redgrave or Wing. It also allows locating titles in a large variety ways that the printed sources cannot. For example, one can identify titles published in a given year. Roman numerals in the publication date are transcribed in square brackets, making them easily retrievable along with their counterparts in arabic numerals. Greek characters are transliterated also making them searchable; they don’t display in a Greek font, however. When browsing the indices, one can easily identify variants and references for inclusion in a search. This tool will be immensely helpful to historians, literary historians, bibliographers, and to anybody who uses Pollard and Redgrave or Wing regularly. However, the price tag will put it out of reach for individual researchers and most libraries, restricting its distribution to research libraries and large well‐funded libraries.
