Special Collections Subject: Help

In addition to searching the standard subject headings listed in the Library of Congress Guide to Subject Headings, you may search in Orbis for Special Collections Subjects which are subjects created at Yale to trace provenance, imprint, chronology, etc., as well as binding information specific to Yale copies. Select Special Collections Subjects from the drop down list following Search in. This search looks only at the Special Collections Subjects and therefore is a more focused search than a keyword search. For more information about Special Collections subjects not in Orbis, refer to the Special Catalogs page.

American Imprints

American Tracts

Auction Catalogs

Bibliographical Files

Binding Specimens

British Tracts

Connecticut Imprints

European Tracts

Incunabula in Yale Library

Latin American Tracts

Mexican Imprints

Pamphlet Collections

Provenance Information

Trade Catalogs

American Imprints

The Beinecke Library makes an American imprint tracing for any work (including literary works, tracts, broadsides, serials, scores and maps) published in the United States up through the year 1820, the Confederate States between 1861 and 1865, and in states west of the Mississippi River through either 1865 or 1890. American imprint tracings are also made for material that was printed in Oklahoma including the Indian Territory through 1907.

The tracing is formatted to include state, city, and date. When searching, put one space between each element.

To access all American imprints in a particular state, omit the city and date in the above search, or omit the date to find all imprints from a specific place.

Example:
On the Simple Search screen:
Search for: massachusetts boston 1720      Search in: Special Collections Subject

You may broaden the search to retrieve all pre-1821 Boston imprints regardless of date by leaving off the date, or limit to a specific decade:

Search for: massachusetts boston        Search in: Special Collections Subject
Search for: delaware castle 179        Search in: Special Collections Subject

On the Advanced Search screen:
Search for: delaware castle 1798   as a phrase   Search in: Special Collections Subject

Use the truncation symbol ? to broaden your search for works published in a specific decade or century: e.g. delaware castle 179? or delaware castle 17?

American Tracts

Search amer tracts in the Special Collections Subject index to retrieve a list of tracts (works containing fewer than 100 pages) published in the United States as well as pamphlets about the United States published elsewhere. Formerly, this collection was limited to tracts published before 1900. Excluded from this collection are broadsides and pamphlets purely literary in nature.

In the Simple Search screen, search for amer tracts in the Special Collections Subject index to retrieve all American Tracts.

To limit the search to a specific date, decade, or century, use the same search but include the date or a portion of the date.

Examples:
To retrieve records for tracts published in 1776:
Search for: amer tracts 1776    Search in: Special Collections Subject

To retrieve records for tracts published in the 1770s:
Search for amer tracts 177    Search in: Special Collections Subject
To retrieve records for tracts published in the 1700s:
Search for: amer tracts 17    Search in: Special Collections Subject

On the Advanced Search screen:
Search for: amer tracts 1776   all of these   Search in: Special Collections Subject

Use the truncation symbol ? to broaden your search for tracts published in a specific decade or century: e.g. amer tracts 177? or amer tracts 17?

Auction Catalogs (In Orbis and Card Catalog in the SML nave)

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.

If the date of an auction is known, you may retrieve the catalog by using a subject search --

On the Simple Search screen:
Search for: auction catalogs YYYY MM DD    Search in: Subject


or Search for: auction catalogues YYYY MM DD    Search in: Subject

If the sale took place over a period of days, the subject search should be formatted as:
Search for: auction catalogs YYYY MM DD-DD    Search in: Subject.

If the sale took place on non-consecutive days, the catalog can be searched using any of the dates of the sale --
e.g. Search for: auction catalogs YYYY MM DD-DD    Search in: Subject
or Search for: auction catalogs YYYY MM DD    Search in: Subject.

When doing a Keyword search, you can set the date limit using More Limits



then

Search for: "auction catalogs" and drouot                Search in: Keyword

Christie's and Sotheby's auction catalogs after 1970 are grouped by year under the title "Auction catalogs (year) (place of sale) (name of auction house)"; details about the specific sale are recorded in the holdings statement. Information in the holdings statement is not searchable through any of the Orbis indexes. Catalogs for some other auction houses are also grouped by title and dates -- e.g. Search for: auction catalogs 1780-1817    Search in: Title. You may also locate catalogs by the name of the owner (provenance) of the collection using the cards filed at the end of the Name / Title Catalog in the Sterling Nave.

On the Advanced Search screen:

Examples:
Search for: christies south kensington ltd    as a phrase            Search in: Author


Search for: Sotheby firm auctioneers London     as a phrase   Search in: Author
Search for: auction catalogs 1931 07 07      all of these             Search in: Subject
Search for: auction catalogs 1780-1817       all of these       Search in: Subject

Bibliographical Files

Special subject tracings for bibliographical features have been made for some materials in the Yale Libraries. You may search these terms in the Subject index on the Simple Search screen, or you can search Orbis using the Genre/Form option in the Search in: drop down list. You may also broaden the search by using the symbol ? at the end of a word or date.

Example:

Note: The place and date of the delivery of Sermons and Addresses are only traced here as Special Collections Subjects when they are different from the place and date of publication. Use the other Orbis indices -- author, subject, title, and keyword -- to search for other Sermons and Addresses that were both delivered and published in the same place and on the same date.

Acrostics
Advertisements
Almanacs
Alphabet books
Anti-Catholic literature
Artists' books
Auction catalogs (search as separate phrases the place and/or date of auction)
Ballads (Used in preference to Broadside poems when intended to be sung.)
Banned works
Blank forms
Booksellers' advertisements
Booksellers' catalogs
Broadside poems
Calaveras
Campaign biographies (search as separate phrases the country and/or date of election)
Captivity narratives
Carriers' addresses
Chapbooks
Ciphers
College addresses (search as separate phrases the place and date of delivery)
College addresses (search as separate phrases the place and date of publication) Use for addresses other than Baccalaureate addresses given at colleges and universities.
College catalogs
Comedies
Comic books
Concrete poems
Congressional addresses (search as a separate phrase the date of delivery)
Cookbooks
Cries
Dictionaries
Dime novels
Directories
Emblem books
Erotica
Expurgated editions
Fables
Fairy tales
Festival books
Fourth of July addresses (search as separate phrases the place and date of delivery)
Fourth of July addresses (search as separate phrases the place and date of publication)
Funeral addresses (search as separate phrases the place and date of delivery)
Funeral addresses (search as separate phrases the place and date of publication)
Funeral sermons (search as separate phrases the place and date of delivery)
Funeral sermons (search as separate phrases the place and date of publication)
Gallows speeches
Gift books
Guidebooks (search as separate phrases the place of description and date of publication)
Hand-colored illustrations
Herbals
Hornbooks
Hymnals
Installation sermons (search as separate phrases the place and date of delivery)
Installation sermons (search as separate phrases the place and date of publication)
Interlinearies
Jesuit relations (search as separate phrases the place and date of relation)
Juvenile literature
Juvenilia
Laws (search as separate phrases the jurisdiction and date of enactment)
Not used for French or Mexican government documents.
Legislative addresses (search as separate phrases the jurisdiction and date of delivery)
Literary hoaxes
Little magazines (search a separate phrase the country of publication only)
Use for advance-guard journals, primarily literary, but sometimes including articles on art and politics, concerned with the publication of writers or writing not likely to be accepted by established journals of larger circulation, i.e. magazines "designed to print artistic work which for reasons of commercial expediency is not acceptable to the money minded periodicals or presses." Most of these magazines have short lives (less than 10 years), limited circulation and few critical essays. Most academic "reviews" such as the Yale Review, Virginia Quarterly or Southern Review are not little magazines. For more information see Hoffman, Frederick J. The Little magazine : a history and a bibliography. Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 1946.
Livres d'artistes
Local histories (search as separate phrases the geographic area and date of publication)
Mazarinades
Menus
Military orders
Morality plays
Nursery rhymes
Official gazettes (search as separate phrase the jurisdiction)
Ordination sermons (search as separate phrases the place and date of delivery)
Ordination sermons (search as separate phrases the place and date of publication)
Original art
Overland journals (search as separate phrase the date of journey)
Pastoral poems
Penmanship specimen books
Photographs (search 19th century as a separate phrase)
Playbills
Pochoir
Poetical miscellanies
Primers (Instructional books)
Programs
Promotional literature (search as separate phrases the place of promotion and date of publication)
Promptbooks
Prospectuses
Publishers' advertisements
Publishers' catalogs
Regimental histories
Roadbooks
Romans á clef
Satires
Scrolls (search as separate phrase the language)
Sermons (search as separate phrases the place and date of delivery)
Sermons (search as separate phrases the place and date of publication)
Slave narratives
Spellers
Textbooks
Thanksgiving day addresses (search as separate phrases the place and date of delivery)
Thanksgiving day addresses (search as separate phrases the place and date of publication)
Thanksgiving sermons (search as separate phrases the place and date of delivery)
Thanksgiving sermons (search as separate phrases the place and date of publication)
Theater programs
Trade catalogs
Tragedies
Tragicomedies
Travel literature (search as separate phrases the area of journey and date of travel)
Typography, Dadaist.
Typography, Futurist.
Typography, Surrealist.
Typography, Vorticist.
Underground publications
Utopian literature
Viewbooks (search as separate phrases the place and date of publication)
Volvelles.

Binding Specimens (Orbis and Card Catalog in Beinecke)

Orbis contains special tracings and notes for armorial bindings, "signed" bindings, binding designers, binding styles, and other binding characteristics such as printed or manuscript waste. Specific terms are listed below. In general only significant examples of binding styles are traced, but certain types such as blind-tooled pigskin bindings are always recorded. Search in Subject in the Simple Screen or use the Genre/Form index in the Advanced Search screen to search for specific types of bindings or binding terms, but to locate examples of bindings of a particular person, search the Special Collections Subjects index on the Advanced Search Screen: as a phrase [name of person: e.g. Newcastle, Henry Pelham] and a second as a phrase [Binding].

Example:

Use the Special Collections Subject index in Orbis to find some specific examples of bindings of a particular person or binder. Use the Genre/Form index in the Advanced Search screen or the Subjects index on the Simple Screen to search for specific types of bindings or binding terms.

Examples:

On the Simple Search screen:

Search for: Robert Riviere & Son Binding          Search in: Special Collections Subject


but
Search for: volvelles                  Search in: Subjects
Search for: pigskin bindings     Search in: Subjects

On the Advanced Search screen, search personal names, names of binderies, initials, or the appropriate bibliographical or descriptive term, using all of these option:

Search for: Edmonds & Remnants Binding     all of these   Search in: Special Collections Subjects
Search for: Binders' tickets Edmonds & Remnants     all of these   Search in: Subjects

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.

Terms for Special Collections Binding Tracings

Accordion fold format (Binding)
Apollo and Pegasus bindings (Binding)
Architectural bindings (Binding)
Armorial bindings (Binding)
Binders (Binding) (Search for the name of binder as a second phrase)
Binders' instructions (Binding)
Binders' stamps (Binding) (Search for the name of binder as a second phrase)
Binders' tickets (Binding) (Search for the name of binder as a second phrase)
Blind tooled bindings (Binding)
Bookbinding (Binding) (Search for a specific year as a second phrase)
Brocade bindings (Binding)
Cathedral bindings (Binding)
Chained bindings (Binding)
Coptic bindings (Binding)
Cosway bindings (Binding)
Cottage style bindings (Binding)
Cottonian Library book covers (Binding)
Cuir-ciselâe bindings (Binding)
Dentelle bindings (Binding)
Dos-a-dos bindings (Binding)
Doublures (Binding)
Emblematic bindings (Binding)
Embroidered bindings (Binding)
Etruscan bindings (Binding)
Fan style bindings (Binding)
Fanfare bindings (Binding)
Flap bindings (Binding)
Fore-edge paintings (Binding)
Fur bindings (Binding)
Gauffered edges (Binding)
Girdle books (Binding)
Goatskin bindings (Binding)
Gold tooled bindings (Binding)
Greek style bindings (Binding)
Grotesque bindings (Binding)
Hollis bindings (Binding)
Interlace bindings (Binding)
Islamic bindings (Binding)
Jansenist style bindings (Binding)
Lace bindings (Materials) (Binding)
Lacquered bindings (Binding)
Landscape bindings (Binding)
Manuscript waste (Binding)
Masonic bindings (Binding)
Metal bindings (Binding) Used only for non-precious metal bindings; search Treasure bindings for precious metal bindings,
Middle Hill boards (Binding)
Molded leather bindings (Binding)
Mosaic bindings (Binding)
Mudâejar bindings (Binding)
Needlepoint bindings (Binding)
Painted bindings (Binding)
Papier-mãachâe bindings (Binding)
Penitential bindings (Binding)
Pictorial cloth bindings (Binding) (Search by country and/ or by date of publication as separate phrase) Used for publisher's pictorial cloth bindings from ca. 1870-1920.
Pigskin bindings (Binding) Used alone if not blind tooled; also search Blind tooled bindings (Binding)
Printed waste (Binding)
Prize bindings (Binding)
Publishers' bindings (Binding) Search as a second phrase To 1800 for early examples
Punch-dotting (Binding)
Settle bindings (Binding)
Shagreen bindings (Binding)
Somber bindings (Binding)
Tortoise shell bindings (Binding)
Tracery (Binding)
Treasure bindings (Binding)
Velvet bindings (Binding)