Literary Print Culture: The Stationers’ Company Archive, 1554‐2007

Literary Print Culture: the Stationers’ Archive, 1554-2007 <http://www.literaryprintculture.amdigital.co.uk/>, a primary source database from Adam Matthew Digital, contains full text facsimiles of the contents of the archive of the U.K.’s Stationers’ Company. The Stationers’ Company began in the late medieval period as the trade guild for illuminators, book workers, booksellers, scribes, scriveners, copyists, and, after the invention of printing, of printers and publishers. Until 1911, this body was responsible for copyright registration of all printed material in Britain; indeed, this body invented the concept of copyright. The resource offers three types of searches: Basic, Advanced, and Archival Record Group (called Search directories). The Advanced Search form allows the researcher to narrow results by facets: Date, Document Type, Record Type, or Theme. Results of searches are the full text facsimile pages of the archival material. These often offer links to entries within the archival documents for information on some significant book titles, authors, and publishers/printers. Indexes contained within the records, if they exist, have links to the full texts also. Extra enhancements include some oral histories, a glossary, a chronology, some images, and a number of secondary source essays by modern scholars. While humanities and history scholars are likely to be the primary users, it does cover material in all subject disciplines.