Wales 1801-1919- The final piece in the UK/Ireland NSTC geographical jigsaw

Aims

The project aims to enhance access to printed material relating to Wales published in the period 1801-1919 by creating an online union catalogue of this material, hosted by the National Library of Wales (NLW).

The nineteenth century was a period of intense political, social and publishing activity in Wales. From just over half a million in 1801, the population of Wales almost quadrupled by the turn of the century. Contemporary statistics suggest that between 1801 and 1840 twice as many Welsh books were published as during the whole of the previous century. In the second half of the nineteenth century the growth was even faster, largely due to the increased number of Welsh language publications.

Well before the end of the century virtually every county town in Wales is said to have boasted a newspaper, or what passed for a newspaper, whose owners commonly undertook the printing of pamphlets and other ephemeral intended for a local readership. As Rhys and Brynmor-Jones noted in 1900, “For the historian no tract or broadsheet, ballad or penny almanac, is without its value”.1 However, the absence of legal deposit in Wales during much of the period and the very local nature of these publications has led to the surviving material being highly dispersed, much of it in the higher education institutions founded towards the end of the nineteenth century.

The project attempts to fill two major gaps in the bibliography of Wales. Firstly, the dates 1801 and 1919 have been chosen to fill a geographical and linguistic gap in the Nineteenth-century short title catalogue (NSTC) which is believed to have excluded much Welsh language material. Secondly, it will fill a gap between Libri Walliae: a catalogue of Welsh books and books printed in Wales 1546-1820, and Bibliotheca Celtica and its successor Llyfryddiaeth Cymru/Bibliography of Wales which cover the period from 1909 to date.

Achievements to date

• Agreed on bibliographic standards based on RSLP requirements and drew up guidelines for commonly used name and subject headings.

• Held a series of cataloguing workshops for project staff.

• Set up an initial database of 13,000 existing records, 7,000 of which were contributed by the National Library.

• Continued upgrading and conversion of catalogue records at all partner sites with regular uploading of records to the union database.

• Made the union catalogue accessible via the National Library’s web site at http://geacweb.llgc.org.uk:8000/

Methodology

• Each partner site identifies records to be included in the project and converts or upgrades them to the agreed standard.

• Conversion and upgrading at partner sites is phased to minimise duplication of effort whenever possible.

• Partners have agreed that MARC records may be freely downloaded for the purpose of the project by other participating libraries using the Z39.50 protocol.

• Other databases such as OCLC and LC are checked if no match is found in partners’ databases.

• Converted or upgraded records are uploaded to the union catalogue at regular intervals.

• NLW staff check uploaded records to eliminate any duplication and resolve conflicting headings.

Deliverables

• The project will convert or upgrade catalogue records for 44,720 items in seven participating higher education libraries in Wales.

• The union catalogue of nineteenth century and early twentieth century Welsh publications will be hosted by the National Library of Wales. The catalogue will include existing records as well as those converted or upgraded during the project.

• The project will help to standardise headings for nineteenth century Welsh authors in the Library of Congress’s name authority file through NLW’s participation in the Programm for Cooperative Cataloging.

• Conservation and digitisation priorities will be identified.

Lead Institution

University of Wales, Bangor

Project Partners

University of Wales, Aberystwyth

Cardiff University

University of Wales, Lampeter

University of Wales, Swansea

Trinity College, Carmarthen

United Theological College, Aberystwyth

National Library of Wales

Project Manager

Project website

http://www.wales1801-1919.ac.uk

Content: Gill Davenport
Last updated 3 July 2002