A Catalogue of Polish early printed books in the British Library collections

Abstract

The British Library has collaborated with the National Library of Poland, Jagiellonian Library and the Kórnik Library within the international project called The Polish Short Title Catalogue. It aims to produce a catalogue of Polish old prints held in the BL collections. The respective stages of the project took place in Warsaw, Krakow and London. The work on the catalogue involved the enhancement and upgrading of the existing BL records in accordance with the current bibliographic standards. Although the Polonica collection contains only slightly over 2000 items, it covers a wide range of topics which reflect the intellectual, cultural, political and religious life of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It includes many rare items such as the „Łaski’s Statues”, works by Mikołaj Rej, Matthias of Miechow, early printed Bibles, Socinian literature and classics of the Polish Enlightenment.