Microforms Research Collections: Early English Books I & II

Alternate Title: Short Title Catalog I and II

Location: Early English Books I is located in cabinets 35A-R in the Multimedia Room. Early English Books II can be found in cabinets 36A-R in the Multimedia Room.

Scope: These microfilm collections (also known as STC I and STC II) are comprised of the works listed in the Short-Title Catalogue of English Books 1475 – 1640 (also known as Pollard & Redgrave) and the Short Title Catalogue 1641 – 1700 (also known as Wing), respectively. Early English Books I aims to reproduce all books in any language printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales and all books in English printed elsewhere through 1640. Early English Books II covers the same material for the period1641 – 1700 and includes work printed in British America as well.
UNO owns the following reels (earlier reels are housed at Tulane Library):

Early English Books I 163 – 516, 775 – 816, 982 – 1979 (through unit 61)
Early English Books II 80 – 1493 (through unit 52)

How to search the collection:
To find items in these sets you can search the English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) online or consult the print editions of the two Short title Catalogues (referred to above as Pollard & Redgrave and Wing). The ESTC will provide you with the reel number (and location on the reel) for the microfilm sets.

You can also search across 25,000+ texts from the first phase of the EEBO-TCP text creation project.

If you use the print editions of the STC (located on the Index Table in the Multimedia Room), you will have to consult the reel guides (also on the Index Table) to obtain this information. The manual way to locate something in these collections is as follows:

For things written between 1475 and 1640, find the first edition of Pollard & Redgrave’s Short Title Catalogue…(1950) on the Multimedia Index Table. This light tan volume is arranged by author (or title for anon. works). For those items we own in the collection a penciled-in number next to the item gives you the reel number in Early English Books I. If you want to determine which position on the reel that item can be found (since most reels contain many different titles), locate the paperback reel guide which includes this reel number. By counting how many books precede your title on the reel you can locate it more quickly when you load it onto the microfilm reader. There is usually blank film between each title on the reel. A large 2-volume revised edition of this bibliography is also located on the Multimedia Index Table (Z 2002.P77 1976 REF). Although this is more complete, there are no penciled-in reel numbers in this volume and you have to find the cross-index which allows you to go from STC number to reel number.

For titles written between 1641 and 1700, consult Donald Wing’s bibliography: Short Title Catalogue…1641-1700 (Z 2002.W5 BIBL). This 3-volume set is arranged alphabetically by author (or title for anonymous works) and also has reel numbers penciled in. There are also paperback reel guides for this collection which can be used to determine title placement on the reel.