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Guide to free eresources

Access a list of free eresources selected by our experts, including websites, full text databases, abstracting and indexing databases and other reference sources

Catalogues and general bibliographies

Bodleian Library Catalogue 

Library catalogue covering the majority of the library collections of the University of Oxford, including the Bodleian Libraries, most College and other libraries affiliated to the University. 

Bodleian Library Pre-1920 Catalogue 

A catalogue of books printed before 1920 which were part of the Bodleian Library's collections before 1988 in all Western languages, including Russian, Hebrew and Greek. 

British Medieval Library Catalogues 

PDF files containing information relating to the Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues. Includes the List of Identifications, which forms an index to identified texts mentioned in documents printed in the Corpus. 

Incunable Short Title Catalogue (ISTC) 

The international database of 15th-century European printing. This records nearly every item printed from movable type before 1501, but not material printed entirely from woodblocks or engraved plates. 

Karlsruher Virtueller Katalog (KVK) 

Book search interface for more than hundreds of million books and serials in library and book trade catalogues worldwide. It is useful for searching for digital surrogates that are freely available online.  

Library Hub Discover   

Union catalogue of books, periodicals and e-resources held in academic and research libraries in the UK and Ireland.  

National Archives 

Holds more than 37 million descriptions of records held by The National Archives and more than 3,500 archives across the country. Includes records for some archives and manuscripts held at the British Library. 

Universal Short Title Catalogue (USTC)   

Collective database of books published in Europe between the invention of printing and the end of the 16th century. 

WorldCat  

Union catalogue created and maintained collectively by more than 9,000 member institutions in more than 80 countries worldwide.