English Short Title Catalogue

The English short title catalogue (ESTC) lists items published between 1473 and 1800, mainly in English. If an ESTC number is included in the 510 of a bibliographic record but Houghton’s holdings are not already represented, our record should be reported; if an item is eligible for inclusion in ESTC but is not already represented, the bibliographic record may be contributed.

To add a new holding, you must request login information from the Head of Rare Book Section. 

Reporting Procedure:

1. Log in using the username and password. 
2. Select Display Records.
3. Select the record, and verify that it is a match.
4. Select Add Holding and add information.
   
   1. At a minimum, Houghton catalogers should contribute shelfmark, imperfections and important local information. 
   2. There is not a separate code for the Harvard Theatre Collection in ESTC. Therefore, enter “Harvard Theatre Collection” before the shelfmark where applicable.
5. Choose Status: Verified.
6. Complete the form and click on Update.

You will find several pages of documentation in the Help section, and can view scans of items in the public interface of the ESTC, under Electronic Location.

N.B. Use the independent, temporary search interface for ESTC (print & probability) until it is restored from the cyber-attack outage.

There are multiple ways to report new items. See here for instructions.