Term Catalogue
The catalogues are a valuable source to researchers today, because they often give dates of the publication processes and information about working titles that were eventually dropped.
Central fairs in Nördlingen, Frankfurt and Leipzig offered publishers from all over Germany, Austria and Switzerland in the course of the 16th century the option to change books they had published and thus to widen the scope of titles they could sell in their respective shops at home.
The four university faculties theology, law, medicine and – embracing all other subjects – philosophy set the catalogue's basic structure.
The unified catalogue issued in Leipzig became the central platform of information about books published in the course of this competition.
Catalogues had their own history on the English market long before the series initiated by John Starkey in 1668.
1670 saw two rival editions for both Easter and Trinity to mend a perceived deficiency in the official Starkey and Clavell catalogues.
London's booksellers complained that their project had focused on publications that sold for more than a shilling, and that it lacked diligence.
The complaint reveals that Starkey and Clavell were paid for each title they listed: The Publishers of Mercurius Librarius, by their unreasonable demands for inserting the titles of Books; and also their imperfect Collecting; omitting many; and refusing all under 1sh[illing] [in] Price; hath occasioned the Printing of this Catalogue: wherein those defects are rectified.
Most of the catalogues offered additional advertisements at the end to announce ongoing projects looking for subscribers and sponsors.
Other prominent headings were Physick (medicine), Mathematicks (comprising Architecture and Navigation in several of the catalogues), Poetry and Plays, Musick, Navigation, Globes, Maps, Cards, Charts, Plates (in the sense of illustrations), Law, Libri Latini (& François), Headings such as Architecture, Heraldry and Astrology remained rare.
The following table looks at all titles under the eleven most prominent headings, with a perspective on the decades and the overall trends:[6] A comparison with modern ESTC data proves that the Term Catalogues remained highly selective.
They reflect, in part, the continuous neglect of ephemeral publications such as short political pamphlets.
The long category of reprinted books was split and brought under the respective headings of the new major categories: 1) Divinity, 2) History & Politicks, 3) Mathematical Sciences, 4) Physick & Natural Philosophy, 5) Philology, and 6) Poetry.
