TEXT-inc database

15th-century printed books contain multiple texts by multiple authors, partly pertaining to the paratext, that is editorial matter such as dedicatory letters, verses in praise of the author, the editor, the printer, the work etc., partly authorial works properly different from the main author and title as indicated in catalogues.

In 2005 were published the six volumes of A Catalogue of Books Printed in the Fifteenth Century now in the Bodleian Library (= Bod-inc) which provided ground-breaking textual descriptions and identifications for over 5,500 editions. The catalogue was converted into electronic form by the Bodleian Library.

The 15cBOOKTRADE Project has converted Bod-Inc into an international database which can host the description of editions not in the Bodleian and therefore not yet described to the same high standard. The 15cBOOKTRADE Project team is adding editions from Oxford Colleges, the British Library, Venice libraries, from unique copies which are available in digital form or are held in libraries which collaborate with the project.

This new database, TEXT-inc, offers a corpus of texts printed in the 15th century and provides one platform for the storage of and access to this highly valuable data to be searched together, linked to ISTC, GW, and MEI.

In Text-inc we approach the content of printed editions in terms of textual units.

For each text, tituli, incipit, and explicit are provided, and where they occur within the edition (leaf signature). The colophon is fully transcribed, the secundo folio is provided. A full description of the database fields can be found in 'Editing_Text-inc', which are provided in English and in Italian. A Subject classification is also applied to editions.

TEXT-inc Person Index

The Person Index is conceived so as to provide not only biographical information, but also ground for statistical research. Descriptors include the role played within an edition (besides authorship: dedicatee, editor, translator etc.), gender, status, profession, area and time of activity. These are the same descriptors that the Material Evidence in Incunabula (MEI) database applies to former owners of books, to assure that book production, distribution, and use can be searched across the two databases with the same parameters.i

Please note: The content description of over 1,800 editions has been kindly provided by Cambridge University Library and uploaded into the database. These records are being gradually adjusted to TEXT-inc fields.