Bibliography of the Scottish Book Trade

Description

Launched in the autumn of 2004, the Bibliography of the Scottish Book Trade (BSBT) is developing as a flexible research tool for the study of an important aspect of intellectual and cultural life in Scotland over the centuries. Its records for our own times reflect the need for a wider definition of the word 'book', in view of the growth of electronic media. This is analogous to the inclusion of records detailing the literature of manuscripts and other materials pre-dating Gutenberg's invention of movable type.

BSBT records secondary materials, including monographs, essays in composite works and journal articles on publishing, printing, bookselling, journalism, broadcasting, binding, illustration, graphic design, libraries and library history, author-publisher relations, the transmission of Scottishness overseas and similar core subjects. Due attention is paid to the lines of communication developed by and for the linguistic cultures of Gaelic and Scots. More selectively, the database records items of general intellectual, cultural, socio-economic and political discourse, insofar as they provide contexts for the core subjects.

Research for BSBT is simultaneously creating the bibliographical content of The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland, a four-volume project to be published during 2006 by Edinburgh University Press. The bibliographical listing for Volume 3, covering the period 1800-1880, has been completed; its records are now being added, in expanded and web-searchable form, to BSBT.

BSBT itself is a project of the Centre for the History of the Book (CHB) at the University of Edinburgh, in co-operation with the National Library of Scotland. Its National Library base is the Scottish Bibliography Unit. BSBT acknowledges the financial support of the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland; this has enabled Dr Tom Hubbard, BSBT's researcher and an honorary research fellow of the University of Glasgow, to undertake the initial work between June 2004 and March 2005. Thereafter the database will continue to be maintained and periodically updated from the National Library.

Like other records in the Scottish Bibliographies Online database, BSBT records follow the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR), are written in MARC21 format and incorporate Library of Congress subject headings. The database runs on the National Library's Voyager library management system. Available searches (divided into left-anchored or keyword) include author, title (including journal title), subject and a variety of keyword and Boolean options. Keyword and Boolean searches – but not left-anchored searches – may be limited on a number of parameters, including date of publication, language and format.

Further information

To find out more about BSBT, please contact the Centre for the History of the Book (CHB) at chb@ed.ac.uk