We have a wide collection of e-resources and databases. Following a cyber-attack in October 2023 these are not available at the moment.
Until these are reinstated, here is a list of useful resources which can be accessed for free:
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Search interface of the records on the English Short Title Catalogue. The ESTC describes printed items published before 1800 in the British Isles, in British colonies, or in the English Language elsewhere. |
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| Early English Books Online (EEBO) - Text Creation Partnership | Full text transcriptions of books on the subscription database Early English Books Online (EEBO), which is currently not available at the British Library. |
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Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) - Text Creation Partnership |
Full text transcriptions of books on subscription database Eighteenth-Century Collections Online (ECCO), which is currently not available at the British Library. |
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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. |
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The Internet Archive offers over 20,000,000 freely downloadable books and texts. There is also a collection of 2.3 million modern eBooks that may be borrowed by anyone with a free archive.org account |
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Access over 700,000 digitised books from the British Library. Use this filtered search to find books from our collection. |
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Provides access to millions of items from providing institutions across Europe. Discover artworks, books, music, and videos on art, newspapers, archaeology, fashion, science, sport, and much more. |
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Digitised broadside ballads from libraries across the world, including prominent ballad collections from the British Library: Roxburghe, Huth, Bagford, and more. |
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Resource allowing to find and view digitised playbills from our collection which are made available via Creative Commons license. |
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Images and data from the British Library Bookbindings database (currently inaccessible online) can be found on Wikimedia Commons. This guide provides more information on how to find these. |
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Collective database of books published in Europe between the invention of printing and the end of the 16th century (this is a newer resource than ESTC and is still a work in progress). |
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International database of 15th-century European printing created by the British Library with contributions from institutions worldwide. |
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Steadily growing collection of files of catalogue records from major European and North American research libraries covering items of European printing of the hand-press period (c.1455-c.1830) integrated into one file. This makes it possible for information to be retrieved in one single search across all files. As the digitisation of collections in contributing libraries progresses, more and more catalogue records point to digital presentations of the early printed book. |
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Union catalogue of books, periodicals and e-resources held in academic and research libraries in the UK and Ireland. Records in Library Hub Discover may provide further information about our collection items than our interim catalogue at the moment. |
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Union catalogue created and maintained collectively by more than 9,000 member institutions in more than 80 countries worldwide. |
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Brief biographical and trade details of all those who worked in the English and Welsh book trades up to 1851. The National Library of Scotland maintains a separate Scottish Book Trade Index). |