Main catalogue
Integrated Catalogue
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Our main catalogue contains
records for over 13 million books, serials, printed music and
maps. You can use this to place document supply requests. Registered
readers can order items in advance of their vist to our
Reading Rooms. |
Other major catalogues
British Library catalogues on the web NOT included in the Integrated Catalogue.
Denotes an external
catalogue that includes British Library items. The British Library is not responsible
for the content or availability of these sites.
English Short Title Catalogue (pre-1801 publications)
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ESTC covers material printed before 1801 in the British Isles, Colonial America, USA (1776-1800), Canada, or territories governed by Britain, in all languages, and items printed elsewhere wholly or partly in English or other British vernaculars. It is a union catalogue of holdings in the British Library and more than 2,000 other libraries worldwide. |
Manuscripts
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Western language manuscripts, private papers and archives acquired since 1753. |
Maps
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The catalogue of the Library's map collections is now available online through the web catalogue of the Consortium of University Research Libraries. Copac will search the catalogues of other major UK institutions by default but you can select the option to search just the British Library holdings. The catalogue of maps in the India Office Records is not yet available online. |
Sound
Archive
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Covers some three and a half million recordings in all genres, from pop, jazz, classical and world music to wildlife sounds, oral history, drama, literature, language and dialect. |
Current Serials
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Records for over 60,000 journals
currently received by the British Library at Boston Spa and our Science,
Technology and Business services in London. Some serials in Asian languages
are listed in the Integrated Catalogue. |
Specialist catalogues
Bookbindings
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This database includes information and images for selected items from the Library's rich collection of fine bindings of books printed in western Europe from the 15th century to date. It is a work in progress. |
Business information
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Catalogue of the business information held in the British Library’s Business & Intellectual Property Centre at St Pancras: our resource for innovators and entrepreneurs. Contains four sub-sections: market research, company information, trade directories and journals. |
Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts
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Use this catalogue to explore in depth the British Library's medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. You can view detailed descriptions with images and take tours of the Library's illuminated manuscript holdings. |
Evanion Collection of Ephemera
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Over 5000 items from the Evanion Collection of ephemera relating to Victorian entertainment and everyday life. |
India Office Family History Search
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When complete, this database will contain 300,000 brief records for births, marriages, military and naval service, deaths, burials, baptisms, bonds, pensions, wills and brief biographies of Europeans in British India up to 1947.
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India Office Select
Materials
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The holdings of India Office Private Papers, Prints and Drawings, and Photographs within the Library's Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections. The main focus is on the countries of South Asia, although there are also considerable holdings relevant to other parts of Asia and the Middle East. |
International
Dunhuang Project Catalogue of Silk Road Manuscripts
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Over 30,000 manuscripts in the British Library and collections worldwide written in more than 15 languages and scripts from the eastern Silk Road, dating from the second century BC to the 12th century AD. |
Microform
Research Collections
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A unique and wide-ranging resource, covering material as diverse as medieval manuscripts, annotated proofs of the novels of Charles Dickens, British Home Office papers and records since 1782, and archives of the Soviet Communist Party and State. |
Photographically illustrated books
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Records for 1,323 books and 15,274 photographs with titles and descriptions, and 320 digital images of original photographs - from 1839 to 1914. Further records will be added in due course. |
Photographs
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The photograph catalogues provide a detailed searchable database for locating photographs, photographically-illustrated books and texts relating to photography held in all departments of the British Library |
Wolley charters
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Use this catalogue to
search the 1039 Wolley charters. They range in date from 13th
to the 18th century, although the majority are from the mid
13th to the late 14th century. They are mostly concerned with
land transfers, wills and marriage settlements. |
Nineteenth
Century
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More than 23,000 19th-century works: available on microfiche. |
Chinese printed books
and serials
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Chinese-language books and serials catalogued after 1993 are included in the UK Union Catalogue of Chinese books which can be searched in simplified characters (GB encoding) or pinyin romanisation. |
India
Office Records
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Access to Archives (A2A) is part of the growing national archives network in the UK. It includes many of the India Office Records catalogues and more will be added. |
Japanese
printed books and serials
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Records for British Library holdings of Japanese-language printed books and serials published since 1969 are included in The UK Union Catalogue of Japanese Printed Books and Serials. Retrospective conversion of records for earlier material is in progress. |
Newspapers
in Asian languages
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Mapping Asia Newspapers catalogue
Most of the British Library's holdings of newspapers in the languages of Asia, the Middle East and North Africa are available on the Mapping Asia Newspapers database. The database does not include newspapers published in Europe or America. The British Library's holdings of Western-language newspapers published in Asia and North Africa are included in the British Library Newspapers catalogue.
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Printed Catalogues
While most of the Library's holdings can be found in these online
catalogues, some material is not yet accessible online. Some categories of early printed materials, for example, are only listed in printed catalogues or handlists. These include many auction and bookdealer catalogues, pre-1801 London newspapers, newspaper cuttings, and playbills. Guidance about these is given in the Early Printed Collections.
The Library has also published an extensive and diverse range of catalogues of specialist areas of the collections. some of these are available in our Online Bookshop.
Other libraries' web catalogues
Here are some of the most widely used, freely available library catalogues on the Internet.
