The research collections in Oxford are second only to the British Library in their richness and number. The intellectual content of the texts held in these collections ranges over all subject areas including literature, theology, law, medicine, classics, political science, history, science and art and architecture. They chart the history of the subject areas, illustrate the development of specific disciplines, and record trends in learning and scholarship.
Our goal is to raise awareness of these collections within the HE sector in order to promote access to them and thus 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.
This project is managed under the auspices of the Early Printed Books Project, part of the Oxford University Library Services. The aim of the EPB Project is to complete the cataloguing of all foreign books printed before 1800 in Oxford libraries outside the Bodleian. The funding from RSLP means that work is now proceeding in up to twenty colleges. This is co-ordinated by the Project Manager, and six cataloguers work independently, using laptop computers, cataloguing directly from the books themselves.
The first phase of the project began in August 1999 with the aim to catalogue 38,000 foreign items printed from 1641 to 1800, by the end of July 2002. The second phase began in February 2001 and will create 6,600 original catalogue records for foreign items printed before 1641. Items are catalogued at least to the RSLP minimum standard for Rare books/special collections materials as outlined in RSLP 99/1 Annexe E. The records incorporate both the required and highly desirable elements described in the Annexe, allowing researchers multiple points of access. This allows researchers to search not only by author and title, but also editors, translators, illustrators, engravers, printers and publishers, by date and place of publication and by subject.
E-mail: EPB-Admin@las.ox.ac.uk
Content: Gill Davenport
Last updated 3 July 2002