Establishing a bibliographic database for hand press books : CERL project

Abstract

AbstractBooks and other printed materials dating to the Hand Press period (ca. 1830) in Europe represent a special field of research. Consortium of European Research Libraries – CERL was founded in 1992 with an objective to establish a machine-readable database for this material. The goals of the project are twofold: to offer one site access to information about the Hand Press books, including holdings data (providing thus the function of a union catalogue), and enable downloading of records into local catalogues, reducing processing costs. To organize a union database named Hand Press Book (HPB), detailed arrangements are necessary to harmonize different cataloguing practices and machine-redable formats, establish use of thesaurus files etc., and make the records as useful as possible. Minimal level requirements have been defined and the characteristics of contributed files are described. The user is also provided with information on characteristics of the material from respective library collections, as well as with detailed instructions for successful searching. Besides, CERL systematically collects information on other related projects and institutions, covering the Hand Press period, manuscripts, together with the history of the book, printing and publishing. Cooperation and project coordination of European libraries is one of the main benefits of this project in which the Slovenian National and University Library participates from the very beginning.