Uncataloged Acquisitions is a database containing records with brief information for material that has been acquired by the Beinecke Library but not cataloged; these materials include printed, archival, and manuscript material not found in Orbis or the Database of Archival Collections and Manuscripts. In general these uncataloged materials were acquired from 1985 until the present although the database includes some earlier acquisitions. Records for cataloged materials are removed annually.

Consult the appropriate curator or inquire at the Public Services Desk at the Beinecke Library for information about other recently acquired materials for the Beinecke Library not represented in any catalogs or files.

The Art Storage database contains brief records for large paintings, watercolors, sculpture, memorabilia, and objects in the Beinecke collections. There are several access points -- collection, creator, subject/title, medium and support -- as well as a brief description of the item. This database was created as a locator file and NOT as a catalog. Other art in the Beinecke collections can be located through the Manuscript Card Catalog, the Database of Archival Collections and Manuscripts and the two Yale Collection of American Literature files -- Objects and Memorabilia.

The Library owns a large collection of auction catalogs (classed as X348). Orbis provides access to the auction catalogs by main entry (the auction house, dealer, or the name of the owner of the collection), the title of the catalog, and occasionally by subject of the sale (e.g. Drawing, Dutch -- Catalogs), as well as through the call number index. You may also locate catalogs by the name of the owner of the collection searching in the Owner Catalog at the end of the Name/Title catalog in the Sterling nave.

Refer to the Help pages for Special Collections Subject Searching under the heading Auction Catalogs for guidance on using this search.

The Binding Specimens Card Catalog in the Beinecke Library records information about specific bindings in the collection, including examples of types of bindings (pigskin, goatskin, etc.), dated bindings, binding styles (e.g. armorial, emblematic, etc.), signed bindings, as well as descriptive details about bindings in the collections. Not all of this information has been added to the Orbis records for these books.

Use the Special Collections Subject index in Orbis to find some specific examples of bindings of a particular person or binder.

Refer to the Help pages about Special Collections Subject Searching under the heading Binding Specimens for guidance on using this search.

The Library owns a large collection of bookseller catalogs (classed as X346.) The majority of the collection is listed in a card catalog in the Beinecke Library, but some bookseller catalogs are also listed in Orbis.

Use the author, title, subject, call number or keyword search to retrieve specific catalogs. You may also use the Subject search using the term Booksellers' Catalogs to retrieve all Booksellers' catalogs. If you are interested in booksellers' catalogs from a particular country, city, or time period include the terms in your search.

Refer to the Help pages about Special Collections Subject Searching under the heading Connecticut Imprints for guidance on using this search.

A first-line index to poetry in the Beinecke Library containing references to over 6,000 English manuscript verses written before 1800 is due to be published in 2005. These poems are not cited in Margaret Crum's First-Line Index of English Poetry 1500-1800 in Manuscripts of the Bodleian Library. A draft of the publication is available in the Beinecke Library and indexes each poem by author (when known), first line, and names mentioned.

Versions of poems also in the Bodleian Library have been interleaved in the Beinecke's copy of Margaret Crum's First-Line Index of English Poetry 1500-1800 in Manuscripts of the Bodleian Library.

NOTE: This publication replaces a card file that had been maintained until 1983 and brings the index up to date with acquisitions as of 2004.

Manuscripts in the Benjamin Franklin collection are listed separately in a card catalog in the Beinecke Library. In addition to a chronological listing, manuscripts are listed by author and recipient.

NOTE: Printed books, pamphlets, and broadsides in the Franklin Collection are described in Orbis although items printed before 1765 are housed in the Beinecke Library rather than in the Franklin Collection Room (SML 229).

About the Franklin Collection: The Franklin collection consists of books, pamphlets, prints, and manuscripts by and about Benjamin Franklin, his contemporaries, and his times. Originally formed by William Smith Mason, 1888S, the collection came to Yale in 1935. Mason's gift consisted of more than 11,000 books, 850 pamphlets, 400 broadsides and a large group of manuscripts. At present, all manuscripts as well as books, pamphlets, and broadsides published before 1765 are housed in the Beinecke Library. Serial titles as well as books, pamphlets, and broadsides printed after 1765 are housed in the Franklin Collection in Sterling Memorial Library.

The Manuscript Card Catalog in the Beinecke Library contains records for manuscripts and archival collections in the American Literature Collection, the German Literature Collection, the Osborn Collection, and the General Collection in the Beinecke Library. While there is an ongoing project to convert this catalog to machine-readable records, the majority of these records provide the only descriptive access to these manuscripts. Some of the card catalog records are also represented in the surveys in Database of Archival Collections and Manuscripts . In addition to the Database of Archival Collections and Manuscripts and the Manuscript Card Catalog, you can locate manuscripts held in the Beinecke Library by searching in Orbis, the Uncataloged Accessions, and many printed catalogs.

Manuscripts and Archives Catalog - Before the advent of automated cataloging, descriptions of collections at both the summary and item level were made available through the departmental catalog in Manuscripts and Archives. With the increased availability of automated cataloging through Orbis, this catalog was closed and no additional cards were filed in it. The catalog is now available on microfiche in the Cowles Reference Center, Manuscripts and Archives.

For a number of the collections, there is a catalog record of each item in them. This level of cataloging gives a much more detailed view of the collection than the summary descriptions offered in Orbis. It is essential for finding all materials of an individual in collections that are arranged chronologically. Access to these materials requires researchers to use this catalog along with the finding aid to determine which boxes contain appropriate items. Box numbers are found in the manuscript collection finding aid that are also located in the Cowles Reference Center.

'Mazarinades' is the name given to a series of pamphlets by and about Cardinal Jules Mazarin (1602-1661) and published in France in the middle of the 17th century. Each title is checked in Celestin Moreau's Bibliographie des Mazarinades (Paris, 1850) 3 vols., which is shelved in the Beinecke Library reference collection (call number: Z2181 M47 M67 (LC)). This catalog represents the only complete list of Yale's holdings of Mazarinades. With a very few exceptions, these pamphlets have not been cataloged individually; they are filed by the Moreau number under the call number:

Beinecke Library
DC130
M43
Z9

A few pamphlets that fit the description of a 'Mazarinade' do appear in Orbis. Using the Simple Search: Search for: mazarinades and Search in: Subject

The Near East Manuscripts Card Catalog provides author, title, and subject access for manuscripts in Near Eastern languages not represented in Orbis. There is also a shelf list for this collection; cards are filed by call number which is composed of first the name of the language (Ethiopic, Hebrew, Persian, Turkish, Urdu, etc.), and then a number -- e.g. Ethiopic 1, Ethiopic 2, etc. Please ask at the Public Services desk for access.

All of the Arabic collections -- Arabic, Salisbury, and Landberg -- and the Persian language manuscripts are available through Orbis; use any of the Orbis indexes to retrieve these records.

There is currently available on one workstation in the Cowles Reference Center a database to the Objects and Memorabilia Collection. Included in this collection are three-dimensional items covering several hundred years. In broad terms, the objects fall into the following categories: structures; personal gear and artifacts; furniture; tools and equipment; art and societal objects; and artifacts covering areas such as communication, recreation, and transportation artifacts.

The Library's collections include thousands of pamphlets (works of fewer than 100 pages) published during the 16th, 17th, 18th, and mid-19th centuries and covering a wide range of contemporary issues -- political, literary, social, economic, religious, and scientific. The following is a partial list of pamphlet collections: College Pamphlets, Tracts, Plays, Poems, Civil War Tracts, India Tracts, Silliman Miscellany, Scientific Miscellany, Library of Americana, Economic Tracts, Funeral Sermons, U.S. Civil War, U.S. Political Tracts, Slavery, Music Miscellany, Music Pamphlets, English Stage, Kingsley Misc. Pamphlets, Kingsley Sermons, Kingsley Theological Misc., Porter, Goodrich, Massachusetts Election Sermons, Memorials, Connecticut Election Sermons, Brace Variety, Pamphlets on Contagious Diseases Acts.

Records for most titles in these collections have been converted from the original handwritten cards into full Orbis records. There are several ways to search for pamphlets in Orbis; in addition to author, title and subject access, in some cases a call number search will provide a browse list if the collection is classed by its name: e.g. slavery pamphlets or india tracts.

Access to a few of these pamphlets, however, is limited to a single main entry card (author or title) in the SML card catalog; there is no subject access in the card catalog. In some cases, however, pamphlets on a single topic -- English Civil War, U.S. Civil War Tracts, Slavery Pamphlets, Economic Tracts, etc. -- were bound together and general subject access was provided by this means. Occasionally, too, pamphlets on similar topics are bound in the same volume within the larger, general pamphlet collections -- College Pamphlets, Tracts, American Tracts, British Tracts. In addition to the single card in the SML catalog, the Beinecke reference collection includes four large, handwritten indexes to the larger pamphlet collections, as well as a number of other handwritten indexes to the smaller pamphlet collections.

Special Note: The College Pamphlet collection, the largest pamphlet collection at 25,000-30,000 titles, is housed in the Beinecke Library. Like most of the pamphlet collections listed above, some titles are cataloged in Orbis; the remaining titles are reflected in the SML card catalog. For the majority of the College Pamphlets, however, there is also keyword access to author, title, and sometimes imprint information through the College Pamphlets database. Three of the four handwritten indexes mentioned above also provide access to this collection by listing brief author, title, place and date of publication in the order in which they appeared in the original volumes.

Refer to the Help pages about Special Collections Subject Searching under the heading Pamphlet Collections for guidance on using this search.

The Papyrus Database -- a catalog of papyri held in the Beinecke Library -- is searchable online and includes scanned images of the papyri. For more information about this catalog, refer to the description found on the Beinecke Library's website -- About the Papyrus Catalog.

The Provenance Card Catalog contains key information about ownership where there is decipherable physical evidence -- owner's bookplates, book stamps, annotated copies, autographed copies, presentation copies -- on items in the Beinecke collections, and occasionally in other collections at Yale, cataloged before 1979.

Provenance information is also available in Orbis for titles cataloged after 1979. Use the subjects appearing on the Terms for Special Collections Subjects List on the Help pages for searching the Special Collections Subjects.

StatCat includes records for numeric datasets in the Yale Social Science Data Archive, as well as datasets in the Yale University Library and on the Internet. StatCat was developed and is maintained by Yale's Social Science Statistical Laboratory and Social Science Libraries & Information Services. Orbis includes records for numeric data on CD-ROM and for codebooks that may not be included in StatCat.

Prior to the implementation of online databases, several subject guides were prepared for areas in which Manuscripts and Archives has particular strengths. Although never updated, these guides include a discussion on the relationship of the collection of papers to the particular subject. Guides exist for the Contemporary Medical Care and Health Policy Collection, and a series of guides to primary sources for the Study of Native Americans, including Indians of North America and South America, Hawaiians, and Eskimos; the Study of China; the Study of Legal History and Lawyers; and the Study of the History of Forestry and Environmental Sciences.

A collection of over 4,000 trade catalogs dating from the 1850s through the 1940s is housed in the Beinecke Library. These trade catalogs cover a wide range of products, such as electrical equipment, bicycles, furniture, and clothing. The card catalog contains one card, filed by company name, which includes the date of the catalog and the company's location as well as a brief statement indicating the type of product advertised. A few trade catalogs are cataloged in Orbis and classed as Uai in the Yale classification. On the Simple Search Screen Search for: uai    Search in: Call Number.

Refer to the Help pages about Special Collections Subject Searching under the heading Trade Catalogs for guidance on using this search.

A card catalog (labeled YAJ) in the Beinecke Library contains listings for manuscript holdings of the Yale Association of Japan. The cards (written in Japanese) include subject cards. Additional access to the YAJ collection is provided by an unpublished descriptive catalog prepared by K. Asakawa in 1945. A copy of this catalog entitled Gifts of the Yale Association of Japan is located in the Beinecke Reference Collection (call number Z3301 +Y35 (LC)) and in the Japanese Reference Collection in Sterling Memorial Library, Room 219 (call number DS821 +Y225).

Since 1972 Yale University has been publishing a newspaper that highlights recent events and a calendar of forthcoming activities for the community. Formerly known as the Yale Weekly Bulletin & Calendar, it became the Yale Bulletin & Calendar beginning with the 1994-95 academic year. Manuscripts and Archives has an index to articles in this publication covering the years from 1972 to 1992. Researchers should consult with the reference staff to access this database.

These two card files duplicate in part the Art Storage online file. The card catalog, however, includes information that is not presented in the online record and includes arts and objects not described at all in the online database. Some of these items will also be listed in the Library's finding aids which are available through Database of Archival Collections and Manuscripts.

Yale Dissertations Catalog - Yale University awarded the first Ph.D. degree in the United States in 1861. This catalog includes references to all Yale dissertations through 1991 in academic disciplines that are currently part of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Because many of the earlier titles do not yet appear in Orbis, the catalog is essential for anyone wishing to determine if Yale has a copy of an uncataloged dissertation. Also included in this catalog are cards for master theses written in many departments that are also part of the Graduate School.

Since 1965 Yale University has had its dissertations microfilmed, and researchers are required to use the microfilm copy rather than the original. Microfilmed titles appear in Orbis.

The Yale Library Finding Aid Database provides access to many archival and manuscript collections for five of the Yale Libraries -- Arts, Beinecke, Divinity, Music, and the Manuscript and Archives Department in Sterling. Finding aids are inventories, indexes, or guides that are created by archival and manuscript repositories to provide information about specific collections. While the finding aids may vary somewhat in style, their common purpose is to provide detailed description of the content and intellectual organization of collections. For more information, refer to the Yale Library Finding Aid Database site. For more information about manuscripts and archival collections at Yale, refer to the specific libraries home pages and to the descriptions above listed under "Manuscripts."