Research Guides: Rare Books and Manuscripts in Kent Library: Resources

Contact

The Rare Book Room is administered through Special Collections and Archives. For information or access, please contact:

Location: Kent Library, Room 306

Phone: (573) 651-2245

Email: semoarchives@semo.edu

URL: http://library.semo.edu/archives

What is a "rare book"?

ABC for Book Collectors
John Carter's comprehensive reference work of terms pertaining to the anatomy of books and to book collecting.

Do you have an "old book" and wonder what it might be worth?

Here are some websites that can help you learn more about those potentially rare books.

What Makes a Book Rare --Virginia Tech
Short article from the Virginia Culinary Thymes listing criteria that factor into a book's monetary worth.
What Makes a Book Rare? -- National Park Service
Conserve O Gram from the National Park Service that explains various criteria that give books value.
Your Old Book
An excellent guide to what defines a "rare" book.
viaLibri
The world's largest marketplace for old, rare and out-of-print books. A good tool for comparing your "old book" to comparable volumes listed for sale.

Digital Collections

Here are some digitized rare book and manuscript collections around the world:

Book of Hours, Brandeis University
15th century Flemish Book of Hours. Website users can choose to view whole page or only illuminations.
Catalogue of Digitized Medieval Manuscripts
Database of digitized medieval manuscripts on the web, searchable by author, title, language, or location.
Digital Medieval Manuscripts at the Houghton Library
Searchable digitized medieval and Renaissance manuscripts and links to bibliographies related to these materials that were compiled by the Houghton Library.
Digital Scriptorium
A growing image database of medieval and renaissance manuscripts that unites scattered resources from many institutions into an international tool for teaching and scholarly research.
Digitized Materials from the Rare Books & Special Collections Division, LOC
Wide range of digitized collections reflecting the holdings of the Library of Congress, includes books, catalogues and selections from exhibits.
Digitized Rare Books, Virginia Tech University Libraries
Downloadable PDFs from the library's culinary history collection.
Publishers' Bindings Online, 1815-1930: The Art of Books
A significant digital collection of decorative bindings, along with a comprehensive glossary and guide to the elements of these objects from the Universities of Alabama Libraries in partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries.
The Rare Book Room
Approximately 400 of the world's most significant books, digitized at high resolution by Octavo, searchable by keyword, category, author, and library.

Rare Book & Manuscript Resouces

A variety of resources for scholarship and teaching with rare books and manuscripts:

Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America
Membership organization for booksellers, librarians, scholars, and collectors. Website offers extensive resources on books and book collecting (terminology, appraisal, preservation, book arts, etc), web casts, blogs, and more.
Digital Librarian: Book Collecting and Book History
Extensive alphabetized list of web links maintained by Margaret Vail Anderson, a librarian in Cortland, New York, on book collecting and book history.
Directory of Web Resource of Rare Materials Catalogers
List of links to resources maintained by the Rare Book and Manuscript section of the Association of College and Research Libraries. Not only useful for catalogers of rare books, but for anyone interested in the history of the book and printing, bindings, paper making, and paleography. Also provides links to digitized rare books and medieval manuscripts.
Latin Place Names | An RBMS Resource
This database was compiled from the imprint information in cataloging records of several Anglo-American research libraries and was compiled by Robert L. Maxwell, Special Collections and Ancient Languages Librarian, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University.
Incunabula: Dawn of Western Printing
Based on an exhibition sponsored by the National Diet Library of Japan, website offers an explanation and history of incunabula, shows examples of various typefaces, explains bookbinding techniques and decoration, and shows examples from the NDL's incunabula collection.
Rare Book School
Website for the University of Virginia's Rare Book School, which offers a series of short workshops on topics concerning old and rare books, manuscripts, and special collections. Website also provides links to other rare book resources on the web.
The British Library Database of Bookbindings
This database is a finding aid to the British Library's bookbinding collections. It includes information and images for selected items from the library's collection of bindings of books printed in western Europe from the fifteenth century to date. There is also a selection from the book bindings collection of the National Library of the Netherlands. Database allows browsing of images, and keyword and advanced searching.
The Rare Book & Manuscript Library Blog, UIUC
Non Solus was a publication about the collections of the University of Illinois Library, published from 1974-1985. The Non Solus Blog was established in the summer of 2010 to continue the work of Non Solus in the digital realm.