Incunabula Short Title Catalogue

The Incunabula Short Title Catalogue ( ISTC, German Incunabula Short Title Catalogue ) is a supervised by the British Library project to create an international catalog of incunabula. Work on the ISTC began in 1980, and was aimed from the start to the electronic recording of the catalog data and the inclusion of data from various national incunabula catalogs. The ISTC Group combines the Incunabula entries of the main European and North American catalogs, and sees itself primarily as a meta- catalog. Entries in the ISTC are significantly shorter than the catalog entries of 1925 started the complete catalog of incunabula (GW ), but by the different approach has the ISTC now greater coverage.

History

1980 initiated Lotte Hellinga, incunabula expert and member of the British Library, a project to create an international short title catalog of incunabula. She chose Incunabula in American libraries ( 1964) by Frederick R. Goff ( 1916-1982 ) as a starting point for the new catalog. Although the entries in Goff were very short, but for the work contained too many items that were added to very regular shape. Especially the second point came against the planned ISTC project electronic recording MARC. After the permission of the rights holder Goff has been obtained, the complete catalog Goff was recorded. The next union catalogs that were tackled were the Italian Indice generale degli incunaboli delle Biblioteche d' Italia ( IGI), the Dutch Incunabula in Dutch libraries (IDL) and the Belgian Catalogue des livres Imprimes Quinzieme au siecle des bibliotheques de Belgique. Most new entries currently come from the catalog of incunabula of the Bavarian State Library (BSB - Ink), whose employees use the ISTC as a basis for their work.

The number of incunabula, ie the 1455-1500 printed with movable type works is estimated at 27,500. No printed catalog lists more than 60% of such works at: GW had in 2000 more than 12,000 entries, Goff 13,000 and 16,000 grove. Compared had the CD -ROM edition of the ISTC 26,550 entries incunabula. Among them, however, are also isolated doublets, so that the cover does not match quite 95%.

Other important short title catalogs are the international USTC ( 15th and 16th centuries ), the English ESTC ( 1473-1800 ) and the STCN for the Dutch letterpress 1540-1800.