The Lewis Walpole Library

Collections & Research

Finding Collection Materials

Orbis	Horace Walpole's Correspondence	RISM	Related Links
Searching for Graphic materials in Orbis -- more detailed help	Digital Images Collection	Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill Collection

The vast majority of the Library's holdings of printed texts are reflected in Orbis, Yale's online catalog at http://neworbis.library.yale.edu/vwebv/ . Also cataloged in Orbis are a growing number of caricatures and satires, other graphic materials, manuscripts (some loose and most bound volumes), and all recent acquisitions. An alternative way to search the online catalog is through YuFind at http://yufind.library.yale.edu/yufind/, although in order to limit the search only to the Lewis Walpole Library's collection it is necessary to go through Orbis.

Recent antiquarian acquisitions at the Lewis Walpole Library can also be found with images on the Library's blog . Subscribe to an RSS feed to receive notices of additions to the collection as they arrive. To see the blog click here.

The manuscript collection has been described in in several articles in the Yale University Library Gazette. "Non-Walpolean Manuscripts in the Lewis Walpole Library" was written by Jeremy Black, (Yale University Library Gazette, 67 (1992), 58-67), and "The Manuscript Collections at the Lewis Walpole Library" is by Warren Hunting Smith, assisted by Catherine Jestin and Karen V. Peltier, (Yale University Library Gazette 56 (1982), 53-60). "Edward Weston (1703-70) : the papers of an eighteenth-century under-secretary in the Lewis Walpole Library" was written by Karl Schweizer (Yale University Library Gazette, (71 (1996)43-48). Manuscript holdings as of 2004 are also noted under the indexes of the National Register of Archives in the UK, and the Library is listed in the Archon Directory (click here).

Approximately 14,000 prints and drawings have been digitized and are available to view on the Library's Digital Images Collection at: http://images.library.yale.edu/walpoleweb/ . The digital collection includes most of the unbound caricatures and satires and a number of pieces from Horace Walpole's collection, many related to Strawberry Hill, including some extra-illustrated copies of Walpole's Description of the Villa, and other graphic materials from the Library's holdings such as trade cards and bookplates.

Many of the items Walpole owned at Strawberry Hill are included in Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill Collection (click here). Records include images, descriptions, provenance, and references.

The holdings for the rest of the prints, drawings, paintings, manuscripts, decorative arts, and other printed materials can be found in the card catalogs located here at the library.

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Orbis

For general help about Basic Orbis searching click here. For general help about Advanced Orbis searching click here.

Finding materials in the Lewis Walpole Library collections in Orbis:

When searching Orbis for anything other than a call number, to limit the search to this collection click on the "Advanced" tab, then using the drop-down menu next to "Location" highlight ".Lewis Walpole Library". It is also possible to limit by material "type" and "year" which may also be helpful.

Finding manuscript materials in the Lewis Walpole Library collections in Orbis:

To limit to manuscript materials, first limit to the Lewis Walpole Library in the Advanced search screen in Orbis, (see above), then click on the drop-down box next to "Type", scroll down and highlight "Archives or Manuscripts" (about 2/3 of the way down the list). The click Search.

Finding graphic materials in the Lewis Walpole Library collections in Orbis:

To limit to graphic materials, again first limit to the Lewis Walpole Library in the Advanced search screen in Orbis, (see above), then click on the drop-down box next to "Type", scroll down and highlight "Visual Materials" (second from the bottom). The click Search.

When an image exists in the digital images collection for an item cataloged in Orbis, the Orbis record includes a link in the holdings record to the digital version. Clicking on the browser's "back" button will return you to your Orbis search results.

For more detailed help on searching for graphic materials in Orbis click here.

Call numbers:

To search by call number, go to the Basic search screen in Orbis, enter the call number, then using the drop-down menu next to "as" highlight "Call Number (Local)", then click Search. Omit prefixes like "quarto", "folio", "drawer," etc., from the search.

The Library has a local classification scheme for all but its reference collection books. Books once owned by Horace Walpole are classed in 49, with the number that follows corresponding to the entry in Allen T. Hazen's A Catalogue of Horace Walpole's Library; books printed at the Strawberry Hill Press in 33, with the number that follows corresponding to the entry in Allen T. Hazen's A Bibliography of the Strawberry Hill Press; and books written by Horace Walpole and not in either of the other two categories are in 24, with the number that follows corresponding to the entry in Allen T. Hazen's A Bibliography of Horace Walpole.

To search by digital image number (lwlpr#) go to the Advanced search screen, enter the full image number (e.g. lwlpr12345), then using the drop-down menu next to "as" highlight "Holdings Keyword", then click Search.

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Horace Walpole's Correspondence

To search the electronic version of the Yale Edition, go to http://images.library.yale.edu/hwcorrespondence/. Each page of The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole's Correspondence has been scanned and run through OCR (Optical Character Recognition) processing to enable scholars to browse the scanned pages as well as search the text for keywords. In addition, users may browse indexes created from the OCR text, including indexes by date of correspondence and by name of correspondent as well as indexes to the illustrations and appendices.

*Please use a browser other than Internet Explorer for best results.

For more information about Searching, Browsing, Navigation, and Display click here.

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Digital Images Collection

The Digital Images Collection affords the opportunity to search by keyword and call number, with search results displaying thumbnail images. It is perhaps best used for browsing. Orbis should be the first choice for more advanced and structured searches, and Orbis records include links to the digital images.

*Please use a browser other than Internet Explorer for best results.

To search the Digital Images Collection, go to http://images.library.yale.edu/walpoleweb/. The metadata is sometimes minimal, limited to digital image number, call number, words appearing in the work's title and, in some cases, artists' names, although it is being replaced increasingly with more complete information from the Orbis catalog records as prints and drawings are cataloged online. These more complete records also include such additional information as subjects, dates, publication information, updated call numbers, and British Museum Catalog references.

In a number of cases, the contents of a volume have been digitzed, but the images are not accompanied by item level metadata. In those cases, the call number and title in the Digital Images Collection records are those for the entire volume, as cataloged in Orbis.

Keyword searches:

A Keyword query searches fields in the digital collection's database for exact matches of the word(s) entered. Keyword searches can be broadened to include any or all of the words entered.

Certain words, including articles, prepositions, and symbols, can cause problems in keyword searches and will result in an error message or incomplete search results.

The default setting for a keyword search is "All", so only records that include all of the keywords will be returned. Click on the button for "Any" to broaden the search so that records with any of the keywords are returned.

Call Number searches:

Enter the call number of the print or drawing in its entirety. It is only possible to truncate to the first three digits of a print or drawing's call number, enabling browsing by year. Truncation beyond or entering an incomplete call number will result in an error message. Call numbers are being altered as graphic works are cataloged in Orbis, and as Orbis record data overlays the minimal metadata in the Digital Images Collection, the new call numbers are replacing the old ones. Typically the new call numbers have additional zeros inserted.

To find images from a bound volume, espeically those prints and drawings without individual call numbers, search on the volume's call number. For example, to browse all of the images from John Chute's Slight Sketches of Architecture, enter 49 3490 into the call number box.

Note: Not all call numbers in the Digital Images Collection are complete or updated. Please search for the item in Orbis or click on the link to the Orbis record within the Full Record view in the Digital Images Collection in order to see the most complete and up-to-date call number information.

Browsing by year:

There are two ways to browse caricatures and satires by year. Either enter the year of publication in the Keyword search box, for items whose metadata has been updated from Orbis, or use the call number search box. The call numbers for caricature and satire prints and drawings are based on the date the print was published or drawing made, so if you want to browse them by year, just truncate the date and drop the millennium. For example, to see the caricatures and satirical prints from 1750, enter "750".

For the Walpole-related and Strawberry Hill materials and other items in bound volumes, call numbers are most often not based on chronology but rather the call number of the volume itself. If you want to browse by year, entering the year in full in the keyword field may yield better results, but note that many of these and other graphic materials do not have dates assigned or included in the digital Images collection.

Cross-collection searching:

You can also search the Lewis Walpole Library's images in combination with those of other selected Yale repositories by using the Cross Collection Search at http://digitalcollections.library.yale.edu/.

Please note that the Library's collections are not included in the Yale Digital Commons.

For more information about Searching, Browsing, Navigation, and Display click here.

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RISM

Individual pieces in the Library's largest group of manuscript music, Thomas Gray's collection in 11 volumes (Quarto 532 MS), are cataloged in RISM (Répertoire International des Sources Musicales), available through the Yale Databases (Ebscohost--click here) and online (click here).

To browse the Library's collection in RISM click here (Yale Databases--Ebscohost) or here (online).

Finding materials in the Lewis Walpole Library collections in RISM:

When searching RISM through Ebscohost, limit the search to this library in the Advanced Search screen by entering "Lewis Walpole Library" in the search box and selecting "Library Information" from the drop-down menu.

When searching RISM through the online portal, limit the search to this library in the Advanced Search screen by entering "US-FAy" in the search box and selecting "Library Sigla" from the drop-down menu.

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Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill Collection

The database will include a record of all of the art and artifacts from Horace Walpole's collections, some of which are now in the Lewis Walpole Library's collections. Images, descriptions, provenance information as well as the locations of the pieces within Strawberry Hill are included. While many of the items in the database are not from this Library's collection, a number of the Library's miniatures, paintings, drawings, texts, and decorative arts can be found here.

Finding materials in the Lewis Walpole Library collections in Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill Collection:

To limit a search to items in the Library's collections, click on Advanced Search, enter "Lewis" in the field next to Provenance, and click the Search button. To look for something more specific, also enter any other information you want to search for in the appropriate field, and click the Search button.

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