On this page you will find information about finding books containing secondary materials about the history and art of books.
Bibliographies of recommended books on various aspects of the book arts, including binding, conservation, papermaking, and typography, are availale at BookartsWeb.
For information about finding examples of early printed books, see the Background Information tab. For information about finding books by characteristics such as their binding or typefaces, see the Form Searches tab. For information about finding books containing particular kinds of art see the Art in Books tab.
Alphabetical, call number, keyword, and other searches of the library collections can be done here.
Other libraries, including WorldCat
Search catalogs of other libraries. You can search specific libraries (academic or public) or national consortia of libraries such as Worldcat.
National Union Catalog (NUC)
Digital version of the massive printed catalog of books cataloged by North American libraries. The main set contains books published before 1956, with supplements for later imprints. As of 2008 25% of the books in NUC still had not been cataloged in WorldCat, so this remains an important bibliographic tool. A contents list for NUC has been created by Vondell Johnson of the Library of Congress here.
A good way to do research on the history and art of the book is through subject searching in the catalog. To do this,
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Early printed books [books printed before 1801] Fine books [includes fine printing] |
Search the BYU Library catalog for BYU theses & dissertations. For other theses and dissertations, search the following database:
HathiTrust Digital Library is a collection approaching 17 million volumes of searchable books, journals, and government documents, including around 7 million available as full-text online.
BYU has joined more than 100 international academic and research libraries as a partner in HathiTrust. For more details about the kinds of content in HathiTrust and to visualize by call numbers, languages, or dates, see Statistics and Visualizations.
What can I do in HathiTrust?
Anyone can search and view the full-text content in HathiTrust. With login, users at BYU benefit from added features. Below is a brief summary of what you can do.
You can log in from the HathiTrust main page.
| without login | with BYU login | |
| Search full-text of all volumes |  |
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| View full-text of non-copyright volumes | |
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| Download single page of non-copyright volumes (PDF image) | |
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| Download full volume of non-copyright volumes (PDF image) | X | |
| Search within collections | |
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| Create and save your own collections | X | |
