English Short Title Catalogue

ESTC title count 1600–1799. The ups and downs in phases of political turmoil are clearly visible, particularly the sharp rise of the title output following the abolition of the Star chamber in 1641.
The series 1477–1799 with numbers per decade

The English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) is a union short-title catalogue of works published between 1473 and 1800, in Britain and its former colonies, notably those in North America, and primarily in English, drawing on the collections of the British Library and other libraries in Britain and around the world.[1] It is co-managed by the British Library and the Center for Bibliographical Studies and Research (CBSR) at the University of California, Riverside.[2] The database is freely searchable. In October 2023, the database went offline, along with the broader digital infrastructure of the British Library, due to a ransomware cyberattack.[3] A temporary version of the pre-1700 ESTC, derived from data captured in 2014, is hosted at https://estc.printprobability.org/. As of January 2024, the Print Probability data also includes limited post-1700 ESTC entries.

  1. ^ "English Short-Title Catalog (1473-1800) North America". University of California. Retrieved 2007-03-22.
  2. ^ Snyder, Henry L. “The English Short Title Catalogue.” The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 82, no. 3 (1988): 333–36.
  3. ^ "British Library cyber-attack – some tips for workarounds" (PDF). Cambridge University Libraries.