Question about entering antiquarian books into LT system

Greetings all,

I am a not really a collector in any experienced sense. But I do love antique books. Whenever I find something affordable and interesting I pick it up. I have about 60 books, ranging from the 1600's to the 1880's, none of them worth anything, but dear to my heart.

I have already entered my collection of modern books into LT (about 1100 volumes), and I am familiar with the LT system. Because they all have an ISBN number I just bar code them or enter in their ISBN, then LT finds the correct info and I just click on accept. I've figured out out to find the right edition if there are multiple editions.

Now I would like to enter in my few antiquarian books, manually I assume. But since I am not a serious collector I don't really know anything about finding the correct information and entering it into LT. I mean, if it is written on the book itself I can gather the pub date etc. But many times older volumes don't have all the information on the title page.

Can anyone recommend for me any tools to help me find information on volumes that are pre-ISBN? or even pre-Library of Congress?

Many thanks for answering a newbie question :)

One of the best sources for the moment (sorry Tim) is WorldCat, which brings together library records from around the world. If you put the title and author information in there, adding a date where you can, it should bring up a list of libraries which hold that edition (so that you can either add a record from one of those libraries or add it manually using the metadata there).

Most of your pre-ISBN books won't have to be entered manually, you'll just have to find the right library to add them from. Once you know that, where you would normally put the ISBN you just use the author, title and date and the right book will usually show up.

If you run into specific questions or problems as you go forward, feel free to ask.

Thanks very much, WorldCat is helpful.

I notice that when I enter a particular edition, LT shows that I share the volume with thousands of others, I can only assume it is lumping all editions together.

This never really mattered to me before, and I'm not really upset, just curious.

I also expanded my list of libraries in LT as you suggested, and that found a certain number of them, although they don't always have the exact same edition.

Thanks again for the help! I'll keep searching too.

Yes, that's right, it'll be combining the editions together into the "work" as a whole (as it does with more modern books as well).

You may have to search a few of the libraries, but it's amazing how many, even some of the more obscure books, you can find. Even if you can't find your exact edition, you can usually find one that is close and just change the info to match your book. After the Library of Congress, I've found the University of California to be particularly useful for older books. When picking a library source, it also helps to know a little about the the various university special/rare book collection library specializations. For example, if you were looking for a book by the Italian poet Tasso, the University of Pennsylvania would be a good place to start.

If you are looking for good old book information and have access to a university, academic, or larger public library there are two major works I would recommend. The National Union Catalog of Pre 1956 Imprints (the NUC pre 1956) is a great place to start (it is basically a big book of library catalog cards). It is a huge set of very large volumes. I am not sure it is available freely on-line yet, but there is a digital/database versions of it (by subscription (?)) and it has been microfilmed. Another great book reference, is a similar publication, the British Museum General Catalog of Printed Books to 1955. This is another large set, though not as huge as the NUC pre 1956. There are multiple editions of this set.

The British Museum (really the British Library) also has many other more specialized book catalogs. One typical example, is A Short Title Catalog of Spanish and Portuguese Books 1601-1700. The Bibliotheque National de France has its own published catalog, as well (not as big as the British Library's), and in French, of course.

For American imprints there is American Bibliography (American imprints to 1800) by Charles Evans.

When entering older books, the publication section can be somewhat limiting. The comments section is a great place to add additional more detailed information about the condition of the book, its binding, previous owners and more information about the printer, author, work or edition.

Full color scans of vols. 1-8 of Evans available at archive.org:
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=charles%20evans%20bibliography%20AND%20m...

The WorldCat site is awesome. I found my actual volumes of Kristin Lavransdatter, a library that had them and plugged them into LT. Very helpful!