Note on Sources
From WikiThing
I See Dead People's Books
For most of the libraries being entered, Amazon is not a particularly useful search tool. LT's OverCat has proven very useful as a default search, but if that fails:
- For American books, the Library of Congress, Yale and Columbia generally have the widest coverage.
- For French books, try SUDOC or NEBIS, then Oxford or Cornell.
- For books printed in Britain, the National Library of Scotland, TALIS, or Oxford tend to be very good (although LC, Yale and some other American libraries also have pretty decent coverage of British books).
- For German and Nordic books, GBV is usually best; try NEBIS for German books printed in Switzerland.
- The Dutch and Swedish Royal Libraries are worth trying for French and other titles from the 18th century and before, as well as for their own languages. (But note that most of the French books that claim to be printed in 18th century Holland were really printed in Paris, so try SUDOC first.)
- The Vatican library is surprisingly good for secular works in Italian
For those tricky Latin place names, this list from the RBMS' Bibliographic Standards Committee might be of some use.