Scottish Chapbooks Catalogue Data: December 2019
Access database files:

Scotchap_project_2014.mdb = list of 3542 chapbooks held by the University of Glasgow, with shelfmarks

Scotchap_mdb = most up to date version of project database (from which the web based chapbooks catalogue was derived until December 2019)

The database contains the following tables that need to be used together:

Books
Bibliographic details of 4624 chapbooks, including authors, titles, imprint information, dates, pagination, size, notes about illustrations\
NB if you wish to consult a chapbook, you will need to find out where it is located – make a note of the book record ID from this table and cross reference this number with the shelfmark in the copies table

Copies
Book record ID number (as cited in the Books table), repository where held, shelfmark/call number, item number if in a bound volume, copy notes (e.g. imperfections)

Works
Titles and first line of 11360 individual items found within each chapbook, with explanatory notes
NB to find out which book the item is found in, make a note of the works ID and cross reference this in the Work_book_link table

Work_Book_Link
Cross references individual works ID with Book ID (to obtain location and shelfmark information in order to consult an item, make a note of the Book ID and search for this in Copies table)

Repository
List of contributing libraries with contact details

Background

This collaborative project began in 1999 between the University of Glasgow’s Special Collections and the University of Strathclyde (Centre for Scottish Cultural Studies). The aim was to create a web accessible union database of Scottish chapbooks. 

Funded by a small British Academy grant, the project began by extending an existing Microsoft Access database of chapbooks held by the University of Glasgow containing 1200 items. The project involved detailed cataloguing of these chapbooks to ballad first line level including contents. Peter Asplin (Special Collections)  reconstructed the Scottish Chapbooks database and Mark Denham (Information Services) produced a Web version in Cold Fusion. This was accessible via the Special Collections website.

The data was refined and developed in 2001 with advice from other partners, including the National Library of Scotland. Details of chapbooks from other libraries (385 items from Edinburgh Central Library and 144 duplicates from Stirling University) were added to the database. In 2004-05, data from 3,739 chapbooks from the National Library of Scotland was added following a grant from the British Library’s Full Disclosure initiative to catalogue the Lauriston Castle Collection of chapbooks. The main impediment to expanding the catalogue to include the holdings of other library collections was funding the staffing costs to catalogue the books as well as convert the data.
At 2019, the web based chapbooks catalogue held details of 4624 different chapbooks in 7878 copies incorporating 11360 individual works including variant versions.
In 2019, the server holding the chapbooks data was shut down owing to security issues. The Cold Fusion software originally used to create the website catalogue was outdated and obsolete, and it was not possible to map over the data into the new University’s collections search. At present, other options for converting to data into a new web based search are being explored. As an interim measure and toe enable continuing access, the data in its original Access format is being made available to researchers via Enlighten.