Download CERL's December 2007 Newsletter (PDF file, 1.3 Mb)
Two files have been added to the CERL Thesaurus with the November update:
The Royal Library, Madrid, is building a database of armorial bindings, stamps, bookplates and inscriptions of former owners of items in its collections, with digitised images.
See CERL's Provenance pages for further information.
In a preliminary test-implementation the CERL Portal now offers access to the “Kalliope Portal, Verbundinformationssystem Nachlässe und Autographen” running at Berlin SB.
It contains 1,200,000 autographs and 21,500 archival deposits. 427,000 historical persons are represented.
The records come from more than 30 German libraries, archives and other institutions.
Read more about the CERL Portal
Each year since 1997 the Consortium has organised a seminar with invited speakers addressing subjects relating to the Consortium’s objectives to precede the formal AGM.
The 2007 Seminar was held on 9 November 2007 at Uppsala University Library. The seminar programme was Script, print and the internet: the early-modern book and its readers. The papers will be published in November 2008 as CERL Papers VIII.
CERL's Annual General Meeting was held the following day in Uppsala University Library.
Imprints and owners: Recording the cultural geography of Europe (David Shaw, ed.).
Papers presented on 10 November 2006 at the CERL Seminar hosted by the National Széchényi Library, Budapest. London, Consortium of European Research Libraries, 2007. 13-digit ISBN 978-0-9541535-6-4, 10-digit ISBN 0-9541535-6-1. [Six papers in English, with Hungarian summaries.]
Read more about CERL Papers ...
CERL is pleased to announce that part of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library (Yale University Library) can now be accessed through the CERL Portal.
The records displayed in the CERL Portal are based on an extract from Yale's online catalogue, which is available here.
Records accessed through the CERL Portal are for manuscripts from the following curatorial areas at the Beinecke: American Literature, Western Americana, German Literature, Early modern books and manuscripts (1600-1800) and Modern books and manuscripts (1800-present). The library's collection of medieval and renaissance manuscripts is currently accessed through the University's Finding Aid database here.
Follow these links to find more information about
Yale University Library
Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library
Beinecke’s collections
CERL's new web site made its first appearance on 27 September 2007.
The web site has been designed by a group of students at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Hannover, under the direction of Mr Alexander Jahnke in collaboration with the staff of the CERL Secretariat.
The web site has been built using wiki technology which provides extensive facilities for distributed editing and maintenance of the site by CERL staff and password-protected access areas for CERL members and committees.
Peter Hogg, Catalogue of Scandinavian Books in the British Library Printed Before 1801. London: British Libray Publishing, 2007. ISBN:978 0 7123 0898 4
This is the first time a major library has produced a catalogue that comprehensively records its holdings of early printed materials from all the Scandinavian countries. Books printed elsewhere in the languages of Scandinavia are included. The collection of over 11,000 items consists of books, periodicals and pamphlets, as well as maps and printed music. The author catalogue containing detailed descriptions is supplemented by indexes of titles, printers and publishers, subjects and provenance. The catalogue represents many years of work by Peter Hogg, who retired from the Library’s Scandinavian Section in 1998.
The Hague, 21 September 2007 - Today all medieval manuscripts in the Netherlands are available on the website Medieval Manuscripts in Dutch Collections (MMDC), http://www.mmdc.nl. The website provides a portal to a database with short, uniform descriptions and photographs of all medieval manuscripts in the Netherlands, about 6000 items in all. Jos Biemans, Special Professor of Medieval Manuscript Studies launched the website today in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, by making the first click on the homepage.
Medieval snapshot
Medieval manuscripts provide a fascinating snapshot of the cultural and intellectual life of this period. Until now, information about these manuscripts and the related knowledge and expertise was dispersed, but MMDC brings all of this material together. MMDC has been set up by the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the university libraries of Leiden, Amsterdam, Utrecht and Groningen, and the Atheneumbibliotheek Deventer and it is partly financed by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).
One website for all manuscripts
MMDC is focussed on creating possibilities for progressive research based on medieval manuscripts, by building a database with uniform descriptions, digital images and links to facsimile editions and subject-specific websites. This way, all the disseminated information about medieval manuscripts in the Netherlands has been brought together and made available through one database. To benefit international use, all information is published in English.
Virtual platform
The website also contains more information on medieval books in the Netherlands. This website will function as a virtual platform for researchers and students in palaeography, art history, philology and other fields. Visitors will find an overview of all Dutch institutions with medieval books, along with information on the history of the collections, contact information and procedures of requesting manuscripts. The website also contains digital versions of several key out-of-print books about medieval manuscripts and an illustrated overview of medieval script.
For questions you can contact Saskia van Bergen, project coordinator Parchment to Portal, tel.: 070-3140430, e-mail: saskia.vanbergen@kb.nl
The Hague, 19 September 2007 - A project has begun to bring the European heritage online through a single portal. Seventy senior managers and technical experts from museums, archives, audio-visual collections and libraries across Europe came together to plan the European Digital Library. The meeting took place at the National Library of the Netherlands.
The initiative stems from the call by Viviane Reding, the European Commissioner for Information Society and Media to ‘make the wealth of material in Europe’s libraries, museums and archives accessible to all’.
This reflects growing user interest in major digitisation projects that are creating large-scale online heritage resources. However, this is the first initiative to focus on providing a multilingual interface to digital artefacts, texts and media from across the European heritage.
Such collaboration between the archival, library, audio-visual and museum domains on this scale is a significant new move. Claudia Dillmann, director of the Deutsches Filminstitut and President of the Association des Cinémathèques Européennes said ‘We recognise that researchers and people learning about European history and culture need to explore all sorts of media, including films, sounds, photos and papers. Their expectation of the internet is that it can give them integrated access to all these things. It’s vital that the different domains work together to collaborate on the technical solutions to enable research across different media.’
The project – the European Digital Library network (EDLnet) – runs for two years, and will develop a prototype that demonstrates proof of concept, bringing together content from some of Europe’s major cultural organisations. Experts from Europe’s major heritage institutions, including the Consortium of European Research Libraries, will collaborate on the technical solutions and user-centred functionality.
The files which make up the Hand Press Book Database have now been transferred to OCLC‘s servers and will become available to CERL members and other HPB subscribers through the FirstSearch and Connexion interfaces from Monday 17 September 2007.
CERL members will receive new accounts and passwords for access to the database in the OCLC environment together with relevant documentation. Access by IP addressing and via Z39.50 will also be available.
It is expected that the HPB service on the RLG system (Eureka and RLIN21) will be terminated from the end of September 2007.
CERL looks forward to working with OCLC to develop the HPB in this new environment.
CERL is pleased to announce that the Wellcome Library in London and the Vatican Library have joined the Consortium as Special Members.
A major international conference will be held at the Institute of English Studies, University of London, on 21-23 July 2008, organised by the Open University and the Institute of English Studies. Keynote speakers will be Kate Flint, Jonathan Rose and David Vincent.
This major 3-day conference, the first of its type, seeks to provide a forum for the study of the history of reading to progress beyond the boundaries of specific institutions, disciplines, methodologies, geographical locations and time periods, in which as many diverse approaches as possible are brought together. The organisers invite 20-minute papers from international students and scholars of any discipline - both within and outside the Humanities - who are interested in the history and practice of reading in any period or geographical location. Paper titles, abstracts of no more than 300 words and short biographies should be sent electronically by 31 January 2008 to all three organisers: Dr Shaf Towheed (S.S.Towheed@open.ac.uk), Dr Rosalind Crone (r.h.crone@open.ac.uk) and Dr Katie Halsey (Katie.Halsey@sas.ac.uk).
Conference website: http://ies.sas.ac.uk/events/conferences/2008/RED/index.htm
The Reading Experience Database 1450-1945 (RED), run by the Open University and the University of London: http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/RED/
CERL is pleased to announce a new Cluster Membership of four libraries under the aegis of the Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon. The four libraries are:
- Bibliothèque municipale de Gap, Hautes-Alpes
- Bibliothèque Rennes-Métropole, Ille-et-Vilaine
- Bibliothèque municipale à vocation régionale de Chalons-en-Champagne, Marne
- Bibliothèque municipale de Lille, Nord
CERL’s latest newsletter is available here: CERL Newsletter June 2007
CERL is pleased to announce the formation of the Polish Rare-Books Research Libraries Group which has joined the Consortium as a new Group member. The seven libraries in the Group will have access to the Hand Press Book Database and will eventually contribute new records for European pre-1830 printed books to the Database.
The Consortium will be holding a seminar on CERL’s work in the field of the European written and printed cultural heritage at the Wellcome Library in Euston Road, London, on 9 July between 2.00 and 4.00 pm.
We will present a range of resources for rare-books librarians and scholars, including
- Hand Press Book Database (3 million books printed before c.1830).
- CERL Thesaurus (multilingual finding aid for places, printers, booksellers, authors from the hand press period.
- CERL Portal (cross searching of manuscript catalogues and rare books catalogues).
- Provenance studies.
The programme for the seminar can be found here.
CERL is pleased to welcome ABINIA (Asociación de Estados Iberamericanos para el Desarrollo de las Bibliotecas Nacionales de Iberoamérica) as a new member of the Consortium. Ten members of ABINIA will have access to the Hand Press Book Database and will eventaully contribute new records for European pre-1830 printed books to the Database.
A joint one-day Seminar on ‘The European Manuscript & Hand Press Book Heritage: the role of the Consortium of European Research Libraries (CERL)’ was organised by CERL and the Research Library, Dubrovnik, with partipants from Osijek, Rijeka, Zagreb and Dubrovnik, as well as CERL contributors from England, the Netherlands, Germany , Denmark and Sweden. PowerPoint files of the presentations can be downloaded here.
2007 is a very important year in the history of The National Library of Wales, as it marks the centenary of receiving the first Royal Charter in 1907. It is a great opportunity to look back over a century of valuable service, and also to look forward into the next century and beyond. The Library has arranged a wide-ranging programme of events for 2007, offering something of interest to everyone.
CERL sends its congratulations to the National Library of Wales on this significant event.
The Consortium of Research Libraries (CURL), the Consortium of European Research Libraries (CERL) and the Cathedral Libraries and Archives Association (CLAA) have concluded a major three-way arrangement that will increase the visibility of a number of historic collections to researchers worldwide.
The three organisations have agreed to add the Hand Press Book Database records of the Cathedral Libraries Catalogue to Copac, the freely available Web-based catalogue managed by MIMAS on behalf of CURL and the JISC. The Cathedral Libraries Catalogue (published by the Bibliographical Society between 1984 and 1998) contains records of books printed before 1701 held in the libraries of 37 Anglican Cathedrals of England and Wales, and includes books printed in the British Isles and British America and English books printed elsewhere, as well as books printed on the Continent of Europe.
The full press release is available here.
Since the CERL Portal went live in March 2006, the number of databases which it provides access to has grown significantly. Manuscripts catalogues of the National Libraries of Denmark, Portugal and Scotland, and the Swedish manuscripts Union Catalogue have been added. In addition, early printed materials in the Hand Press Book Database and the English Short Title Catalogue are now also accessible through the CERL Portal. This offers scholars the unique opportunity to access the European written and printed heritage side-by-side.
Extensive details about the contents of the manuscripts databases are available through the CERL website here. The CERL Portal is available at http://cerl.epc.ub.uu.se/sportal/.
The report on Implementing Persistent Identifiers, which was recently co-published by CERL and ECPA, has been reviewed by Barrie Howard, DLF Program Associate, in CLIR issues number 55 of January/February 2007, published by the Council on Library and Information Resources in the US. He calls it ‘a valuable report’ and ends: ‘Implementing Persistent Identifiers may not provide all the answers, but its contributions could help libraries move toward designing and building systems free of roadblocks and dead ends.’ The full review can be found at http://www.clir.org/pubs/issues/index.html
The report has also been recommended in a review by Emmanuelle Bermès in IFLA’s International Preservation News, No 40, Dec. 2006.
The Academic Library of Tallinn University and the Tallinn City Archives have just announced the publication of a new book: Books and Libraries in the Baltic Region from the 16th to the 18th Century = Bücher und Bibliotheken im Ostseeraum vom 16. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert edited by Lea Kõiv, Tiiu Reimo. Tallinn, 2006. ISBN: 109985-9128-8-8 ISBN: 13978-9985-9128-8-1 Price: 160.00 EEK = ca 11.00 EUR. Distributors: Tallinn University Library (Marika.Plooman@tlulib.ee) and Tallinn City Archives (linnaarhiiv@tallinnlv.ee).
There are 15 articles, based on papers from an academic conference on the same subject, which took place on 4-5 April 2002 in Tallinn, organised by the Academic Library (of Tallinn University) and the Tallinn City Archives. The articles are divided into two groups: ‘Bibliotheken und historische Kollektionen’ (‘Libraries and Historical Collections’) and ‘Buchgeschichtliche Forschungen’ (‘Treatments of the History of the Book’). Most of the articles are related to Estonia: collections preserved in Estonia, books of Estonian origin, or contacts of the Estonian book culture with other countries. The articles are written by historians and librarians from Estonia, Germany, Sweden, Finland and Lithuania (Martin Klöker, Tiiu Reimo, Esko Häkli, Alma Braziuniene, Domas Kaunas, Jürgen Beyer, etc.)