Universal Short Title Catalogue

The Universal Short Title Catalogue (USTC) brings together information on all books published in Europe between the invention of printing and the end of the sixteenth century, creating a powerful resource for the study of the book and print culture. The project has a searchable interface, which brings together data from established national bibliographical projects and new projects undertaken by the project team based at the University of St Andrews, with partners in University College Dublin. This new work builds upon the principles established by the St Andrews French Vernacular Book project, completed and published in 2007 (FB volumes 1 & 2). New work undertaken in St Andrews has created bibliographies of Latin books published in France (FB volumes 3 & 4) and of books published in the Low Countries (NB). The project team has also collected and analysed information on books published in Eastern Europe and Scandinavia. Meanwhile, partners in University College Dublin created a bibliography of books published in the Iberian Peninsula (IB). In 2011 this was all brought together with information on books published in Italy, Germany and Britain to create a fully searchable resource covering all of Europe. This provides access to the full bibliographic information, locations of surviving copies and, where available, digital full text editions that can be accessed through the database. All told, this information encompasses approximately 350,000 editions and around 1.5 million surviving copies, located in over 5,000 libraries worldwide.