How to find Folger material if Hamnet is down

On rare occasions, Hamnet, the Folger's online catalog of bibliographic data, becomes unavailable. Ususally, outages only last a couple of minutes, so the solution is "try again," but occasionally the outage is related to a major server upgrade that might last a day or two. If this happens, here are some places to go for better-than-nothing information.

Material acquired before 1997

If you are on-site, you can use the Folger's card catalogs to find material acquired before 1997.

Manuscripts

Folger finding aids are independent of Hamnet, and can be searched directly at [1]. Tens of thousands of Folger manuscripts are described at the item-level in finding aids (note: many are only described at the item-level in finding aids, with Hamnet containing a collection-level description).

Pre-1801 English imprints

Virtually all of the Folger's pre-1801 English imprints can be found in the English short title catalogue, or ESTC. The ESTC can be searched at http://estc.bl.uk/. Scroll to the bottom of a record and look under "Copies - N.America" to see if "Folger Shakespeare" is listed as a holding library, or begin your search on the "Advanced" tab and include "Folger" under "Library name." To find the item's call number, select "HOLDINGS DETAILS" near the top right of the screen, and look for the "Shelfmk" information for the Folger copy.

Material that has been photographed

If the item you're looking for has been photographed in whole or in part at the Folger, you can find its call number through LUNA, the online Digital image collection at [2]

Shakespeare promptbooks

All but a small handful of Shakespeare promptbooks in the Folger collection are fully digitized in Shakespeare in Performance, (accessible onsite at the Folger, or through subscription). See also List of digitized Folger promptbooks.