Digital resources at the Folger

This article lists selected digital resources—arranged by type—available through the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Please visit the alphabetical List of digital resources at the Folger for the same resources arranged alphabetically by name.

♠ - Resources marked with this symbol can only be accessed while logged in to the Folger network, unless readers can access them through their own institutions.

New Databases

♠ 17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers contains not only newspapers, but newsbooks, Acts of Parliament, broadsides, pamphlets and proclamations. On-site Folger access only

♠ Nineteenth Century Collections Online: British Theatre features a wide range of primary sources related to the arts in the Victorian era, from playbills and scripts to operas and complete scores. On-site Folger access only

Bibliographies

♠ Bibliography of British and Irish History provides bibliographic data on historical writing dealing with the British Isles, and with the British Empire and Commonwealth, during all periods for which written documentation is available - from 55BC to the present.

♠ Bibliography of English Women Writers 1500-1640 currently indexes the works of around 740 female writers and translators.

English Short-Title Catalogue (ESTC) is a comprehensive, international union catalogue listing early books, serials, newspapers and selected ephemera printed before 1801. For more information on this resource please see English Short-Title Catalogue.

♠ Iter Bibliography is a bibliography comprised of secondary source material pertaining to the Middle Ages and Renaissance (400-1700), including citations for books and journal material (articles, reviews, review articles, bibliographies, catalogues, abstracts and discographies), dissertation abstracts, and essays in books (including entries in conference proceedings, festschriften, encyclopedias and exhibition catalogues).

♠ Iter: Gateway to the Middle Ages & Renaissance brings together numerous database sources for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Some are subscription access only, while others are freely available.

♠ Iter Italicum is a finding list for Renaissance humanistic manuscripts in libraries and collections all over the world.

♠ John Milton: A Bibliography (MRTS Online Series) attempts to bring together all manuscripts and editions of John Milton's works and all studies and critical statements concerning his life and works, all allusions and quotations, and all significant imitations during the years 1624-1799.

♠ MLA International Bibliography provides citations to journal articles, books, dissertations, and scholarly websites, from 1921 to the present, in academic disciplines such as language, literature, folklore, linguistics, literary theory and criticism, and the dramatic arts.

Romeo and Juliet: Searchable Database for Prompt Books contains information from approximately 170 prompt-books for productions of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. These productions range from the seventeenth century to the 1980s.

♠ World Shakespeare Bibliography: indexes Shakespeare-related scholarship and theatrical productions published or produced worldwide since 1960. WSB offers an annual research fellowship for PhD students who work for the bibliography.

Bindings

Bindings Image Database on LUNA features the many gorgeous bindings held in the Folger.

Biographical resources

♠ American National Biography is updated semi-annually with new articles and revisions of previously published entries; contains articles of notable Americans through the mid-twentieth century.

♠ Burke's Peerage and Gentry: genealogy and heraldry information for the Peerage of the United Kingdom, the historical families of Ireland and the Commonwealth of Nations, and royal and distinguished families worldwide.

♠ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online (DNB): biographical information on men and women who have shaped British history and culture, worldwide, from the Romans to the 21st century; updated three time a year.

Collections of papers

♠ British History Online: Includes Calendars of State Papers, Domestic and the Calendars of State Papers for Scotland and Ireland, along with the Calendar of Close Rolls.

♠ British Theatre: Nineteenth Century Collections Online features a wide range of primary sources related to the arts in the Victorian era, from playbills and scripts to operas and complete scores.

♠ Burney Collection: 17th-18th Century Newspapers contains not only newspapers, but newsbooks, Acts of Parliament, broadsides, pamphlets and proclamations.

♠ Cecil Papers: archive consisting principally of the correspondence of William Cecil, Lord Burghley (1520-1598) and his son, Robert, the 1st Earl of Salisbury (1563-1612).

♠ The Newdigate newsletters, Numbers 1 through 2100 (13 January 1673/4 through 11 June 1692): thrice-weekly news releases issued by the Secretary of State's office, highlighting matters of interest to the Stuart court.

♠ State Papers Online, 1509 - 1714 provides access to the Calendars, transcript and document images for the Domestic and Foreign State Papers, and Registers of the Privy Council for 1509-1714.

♠ Virginia Company Archives: Transcripts and images of the Ferrar Papers from Magdalene College, Cambridge, and the papers of the Virginia Company. Documents date from approximately 1540-1770.

Dictionaries and Calendars

Glossary of Illuminated Manuscripts: reproduced and illustrated by the British Library from Michelle P. Brown, Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts: A Guide to Technical Terms (J. Paul Getty Museum: Malibu and British Library: London, 1994).

Multilingual Bookbinding Dictionary: an international dictionary of bookbinding and conservation terms.

Online Dictionary for Library and Information Sciences

♠ Oxford English Dictionary Online (OED)

Historical Calendar: Multi-country historical calendar for the years 1100 to 2100. Allows automatic conversion between Old Style and New Style dates.

Digital texts

♠ American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language (ARTFL) contains French-language texts from the 12th to 20th century, Diderot and d'Alembert's late 18th century Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, par une Société de Gens de lettres, digitized versions of many Bibliothèque Bleue de Troyes (17th to mid-19th c.), a searchable version of Montaigne's Essais, and a different search interface for Tufts' Perseus Project (Greek & Latin texts).

♠ British Literary Manuscripts Online: facsimile images of literary manuscripts, including letters and diaries, drafts of poems, plays, novels, and other literary works, and similar materials; early 12th century through 1900.

COPIA/CERES (Cambridge English Renaissance Electronic Service) provides access to manuscripts related to Spenser and resources for early modern English handwriting.

♠ Early English Books Online - Chadwyck-Healey (EEBO): digital facsimile page images of works printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700; full-text search of EEBO-TCP Phase 1; cross-search with ECCO. For more information, see History of Early English Books Online and Using Early English Books Online.

♠ Early English Books Online - Text Creation Partnership (EEBO-TCP): encoded electronic text editions of many early print books in Early English Books Online, Eighteenth Century Collections Online, and Evans Early American Imprints.

Early Stuart Libels: early 17th century English political poetry from the accession of King James I to the outbreak of the English Civil War.

♠ Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO): Primarily focused on publications from the British Isles, but does include material from Western Europe and Russia. Access to page images and some full-text search.

EuroDocs: Primary Historical Documents from Western Europe is a repository of links to freely available primary source documents on the web; organized by both geographic area and time period.

Folger Digital Texts provides a digital version of the Folger Shakespeare texts with easy and sophisticated search options.

John Foxe’s Book of Martrys Variorum Edition: browse and compare the unabridged texts of the four editions of this massive work published in John Foxe’s lifetime (1563, 1570, 1576, 1583).

Leonardo da Vinci and his Treatise on Painting: website examining all of the different variations of this text that appeared throughout the centuries; includes extensive bibliography.

♠ Literary Manuscripts Online: 17th and 18th Century Poetry from the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds: manuscripts of 17th and 18th century English language verse, including first lines, last lines, attribution, author, title, date, length, verse form, content and bibliographic references for over 6,600 poems within the collection.

Luminarium is an online anthology of English literature from the late Medieval period through the 18th century; texts from out-of-copyright editions.

The Medici Archive Project: Documentary Sources for the Arts and Humanities in the Medici Granducal Archive, 1537-1743, is a fully searchable database describing hundreds of volumes of documents in the Medici Granducal Archive (Archivio Mediceo del Principato).

♠ Perdita Manuscripts: Women Writers, 1500-1700: Manuscripts written or compiled by women in the British Isles in the 16th and 17th centuries; also includes bibliographic sources.

Scriptorium: Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts Online: A digital archive of manuscript miscellanies and commonplace books from c. 1450-1720.

17th Century Shakespearean Prompt Books from the University of Virginia, with introductions to each book and descriptions of each annotation within the plays.

♠ Women Writers Online: a full-text collection of early women’s writing in English which includes full transcriptions of texts published between 1526 and 1850, focusing on materials that are rare or inaccessible.

E-Books

♠ American Council of Learned Societies Humanities E-Book (HEB): E-book records are searchable in Hamnet, with a link to ACLS full-text. All e-books are full-text searchable at ACLS site.

♠ Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson Online provides a fully digitized and updated edition of Jonson's complete writings, with editorial and scholarly remarks throughout the texts.

♠ Oxford Scholarly Editions Online provides an interlinked collection of authoritative Oxford editions of major works from the humanities.

Finding aids and indices

Glossary of digital humanities terms aims to help both novices and more advanced users of digital tools and approaches understand common terms employed in the digital humanities.

Folger Shakespeare Library microfilms database provides an easy way to search the Folger's microfilm collection so that readers may have some form of access to restricted or fragile materials.

Folger Shakespeare Library microfilms hand-list (PDF) is an addition/supplementary list to the microfilm database. Readers are advised to check both places when searching for a microfilm.

Folger Shakespeare Library online finding aids guides users through the extensive manuscript collections with descriptions and lists of items.

PLRE.Folger: private libraries in Renaissance England complements the printed volumes of Private Libraries in Renaissance England (PLRE), an ongoing editorial project that has published eight volumes since 1992 in the Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies (MRTS) series.

Rinascimento: Harvard University's Research Guide for Renaissance Studies. Contains links to databases, websites, and other resources, divided and subdivided by general topical area.

Sixteenth Century Collections in North American Research Libraries links to half a dozen library collections that are particularly strong in early modern materials.

The Union First Line Index of English Verse enables researchers to locate poems held in seven prestigious collections in the US and UK, including the Folger Shakespeare Library. The Index provides a database of over 224,000 first lines of manuscript and printed verse. firstlines@folger.edu

Image resources

♠ CAMIO: OCLC's Catalog of Art Museum Images Online: OCLC's digital image collection, covering a wide range of geographic and temporal areas. Browse-able by contributing museum.

Impositor is an online tool to automatically arrange digital images from the collection into simulated impositions (the laying out of pages into the formes of printed sheets).

LUNA Digital Image Database contains high-quality, high-resolution images of a large number of Folger collection items. Users have the ability to store their preferred images in media groups, create presentations, and export images.

Journals

Common-Place

Early English Studies

Early Modern Culture

Early Modern Literary Studies

Exemplaria

♠ Shakespeare Quarterly (JSTOR): Back issues from 1950 through five years before the current issue.

♠ Shakespeare Quarterly (Project Muse): Back issues for the most recent four years.

Library catalogs

Hamnet, the Folger's online catalog, gives bibliographic information, copy-specific notes, and detailed information—often with links to images—of most of the items in the collection.

♠ FirstSearch: OCLC Databases: Default database: WorldCat. Select the "Search in database" dropdown to select one of the following databases: ArticleFirst, ClasePeriodica, OCLC Ebooks, OCLC ECO, ERIC, GPO, MEDLINE, OAIster, PapersFirst, Proceedings, WorldAlmanac, WorldCat, WorldCatDissertations.

International Library Catalogs from vialibri.net. Provides a list of union and other catalogs from Europe and the United States. Links to sources such as WorldCat, the KVK, and artlibraries.net.

Other Online Resources

Blogs and Social Media

The Collation: a gathering of scholarship from the Folger Shakespeare Library is a blog about Folger collections and resources written by Folger staff and readers.

@FolgerLibrary is the main twitter account for the Folger.

@FolgerResearch covers the research and collections aspects of the Folger.

@FolgerED is the twitter account for the Folger's Education Department.

Resource Websites

♠ Archive Grid is a service provided by OCLC brings together information about archives, special collections and other collections of manuscripts and papers.

History On-Line provides information for historians with details of university lecturers in the UK and the Republic of Ireland, current and past historical research, digital history projects, new books and journals from a range of leading publishers and sources of funding available for researchers in the UK.