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Zotero bibliography
A bibliography of published references to manuscripts in the Bodleian Library and other Oxford collections is published on Zotero.
The bibliography began as a card index in the 1890s which was continued until 2018 but is no longer maintained in physical form. The index cards are in the process of being converted to electronic form. The Zotero bibliography currently includes (1) references to publications published after c. 1992 relating to all manuscripts; (2) complete references for all manuscripts with shelfmarks Add. - Douce 399 and Lat. bib. to Wood.
Bibliographical information on the cards is often incomplete. For example, a card might cite a journal article only by journal title, volume, and page, without supplying the author or article title. As a result several records in Zotero are also incomplete, although there should always be sufficient information to locate a reference. For similar reasons there are a number of duplicate records in the bibliography, although we are working hard to reduce these.
The bibliography is not comprehensive. It has been primarily compiled (1) from the indexes of new books selected for potential inclusion on the open shelves of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Reading Room; (2) from offprints sent to the Library by authors who reproduce or cite its manuscripts in their publications. Bibliographical surveys, such as that published in the journal Scriptorium, have been used on occasion but not systematically.
The focus of the bibliography is the Bodleian Library's medieval Western manuscripts, but there are a number of references to Oxford college manuscripts and to post-medieval Western manuscripts in the Bodleian.
The easiest way to find references to a particular manuscript is to follow the link at the bottom of its record in the online catalogue. However, there are some references in Zotero which will not be picked up in this way, for example if a record has a tag such as "MSS. Laud (general)".
To search for a manuscript within the Zotero interface itself, use the 'Filter Tags' option in the left pane of the screen under 'Tags'. Please note that the shelfmark of the manuscript must be entered exactly as it appears in the catalogue, including spaces and punctuation.
The bibliography can also be searched by author, title, or full text of record. This provides an additional way of exploring the collections that supplements the catalogue information. For example a search for "crusade" will reveal manuscripts with material relating to the Crusades that may not be found through a catalogue search.
Most of the bibliographical fields will be familiar, but the following needs explanation:
Loc. In Archive. This field refers to a two series of box files kept in the Weston Gallery. (1) Refs : this series contains mostly offprints of articles, but also some newspaper clippings and unpublished notes. The series is cited by folder and item number, e.g. Refs. CXLI.1 = folder CXLI, item 1. (2) Letters about Bodleian Manuscripts : this series contains unpublished letters sent to the library about particular manuscripts. Within each file the letters are stored in alphabetical sequence of shelfmark. The series is cited by folder number.
The Notes attachments contain details of which page(s) refer to particular manuscript(s). (There may be several Notes: this occurs when duplicate records are merged.)
You can notify us of additions to the bibliography by emailing specialcollections.enquiries@bodleian.ox.ac.uk or by filling in a Google form