How to Find Rare Books at Wilson Special Collections Library: Digitized Books
Digitized Books in the Catalog
The catalog offers links to many digitized books. Some of these are digital copies of items held by UNC and some are copies of items held by other institutions.
Below are links to digitized items by century dating from 1300 to 1899. You can search these items by entering your search terms into the "Search Within Results" box at the top of the page. You can also limit your search results by checking categories at the left hand side of the page.
Databases and Digital Resources
Below is a selection of digital resources relating to rare books. For discipline-specific resources, see the Library's E-Research By Discipline page.
- English Short Title Catalogue 1473-1800 (ESTC)Lists over 480,000 items published between 1473 and 1800: mainly but not exclusively in English; published mainly in the British Isles and North America. The full text of most of the items indexed in ESTC may be available in: Early English Books Online, Eighteenth Century Collections Online or Early American Imprints I & II & Supplements. The ESTC does include items that have not or will not be digitized so it is the most complete Index for the period.
- Universal Short Title Catalogue (USTC)The USTC is a collective database of all books published in Europe between the invention of printing and the end of the sixteenth century.
- Early English Books Online (EEBO)"Digitized copies of approximately 128,000 titles included in the two Short-Title Catalogues [see below], in the Thomason Collection ... Although most of the images are captured from the microfilms that make up Early English Books, 1475–1640 and Early English Books, 1641–1700 ... and thus are not searchable, an increasing number of titles (approximately 44,000 of a planned 69,000) can be searched by keyword in a rekeyed full text." (James Harner, Literary Research Guide) Consult About EEBO in the database to check the status.
- Incunabula Short Title CatalogueThe Incunabula Short Title Catalogue is the international database of 15th-century European printing created by the British Library with contributions from institutions worldwide.
- Eighteenth Century Collections OnlineProvides access to 40 million full-text images and text-searchable pages of nearly 180,000 English-language titles and editions (200,000 volumes) published between 1701-1800.
- Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-Century Electronic ScholarshipA scholarly organization devoted to forging links between the material archive of the nineteenth century and the digital research environment of the twenty-first.
- Bibliothèque Nationale de FranceBibliothèque Nationale de France (BnF) Catalog.
- GallicaBibliothèque Nationale de France (BnF) digital collection.
- La Biblioteca ComplutenseUniversidad Complutense Madrid catalog.
- Colección Digital DioscóridesUniversidad Complutense Madrid digital collection.
- Catálogo de la Biblioteca Nacional de EspañaBiblioteca Nacional de España catalog.
- Biblioteca Digital HispanicaBiblioteca Nacional de España digital collection.
- HamnetFolger Shakespeare Library catalog.
- LunaFolger Shakespeare Library digital collection.
Connect with us
