Please forward this on to scholars, researchers, hackers and anyone that may be interested in the redesign of the English Short Title Catalog. We hope to get as much feedback as possible before venturing forth in this endeavor.

Many thanks,

Luis Baquera





Big changes are underway with the English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC), and we need your input.  A union catalog and bibliography of English printing from 1473 to 1800, the ESTC has developed over the last three decades into one of the most comprehensive and authoritative bibliographies available.  Yet access to ESTC data has evolved very little.

Last year the ESTC was awarded a planning-grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to “redesign the project as a 21st century research tool.”  For the last nine months a planning committee has discussed how to make the resource more usable to a broad spectrum of researchers and librarians and to harness the knowledge and input of those users to refine and expand ESTC data.  The recommendations of that committee are now available online at http://estc21.wordpress.com

The planning committee welcomes and encourages feedback on our ideas from ESTC users.  The ESTC21 website<http://estc21.wordpress.com/> with our recommendations will remain active through April 20.  Please support this effort to rethink the future of the ESTC by commenting on the ESTC21 pages and taking the brief survey<http://estc21.wordpress.com/survey/> at the end of the website.  Your feedback is critical.  From the entire planning committee, thank you for your contributions to this project.

Brian Geiger
Director, CBSR and ESTC/NA