Main Catalogue: Integrated Catalogue
Our main catalogue contains records for well over 13 million books, serials, printed music, maps and newspapers. You can use this to place document supply requests. Registered Readers can order items in advance of their visit to our Reading Rooms.
Try our new beta catalogue and tell us what you think
Newspaper Catalogue
To search for newspapers held at British Library Newspapers, Colindale, you must use the Integrated Catalogue's Newspaper catalogue subset.
The Integrated Catalogue contains some records of items held at Colindale but only where the Library holds more than one copy of the item. If the British Library Newspapers copy is the only copy the Library holds, you will not find an entry in the Integrated Catalogue.
British National Bibliography (BNB) Online
The British National Bibliography is available to search, online, for free. To search for BNB records you must use the British Library Integrated Catalogue BNB subset.
Other major catalogues
British Library catalogues on the web NOT included in the Integrated Catalogue.
Denotes an external catalogue that includes British Library items. The British Library is not responsible for the content or availability of these sites.
Search our Catalogue - beta allows you to search and view the details of 13 million books, journals, newspapers, conferences etc. more simply than ever before. Try it out, then tell us what you think.
English Short Title Catalogue (pre-1801 publications)
ESTC covers material printed before 1801 in the British Isles, Colonial America, USA (1776-1800), Canada, or territories governed by Britain, in all languages, and items printed elsewhere wholly or partly in English or other British vernaculars. It is a union catalogue of holdings in the British Library and more than 2,000 other libraries worldwide.
The Incunabula Short Title Catalogue is the international database of 30,000 editions of 15th-century European printing, created by the British Library with the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, the Biblioteca Nazionale, Rome and contributions from other institutions worldwide. Information includes authors, short titles, the language of the text, printer, place and date of printing, and format, and includes links to online digital facsimiles.
Western language manuscripts, private papers and archives acquired since 1753.
The majority of the Library's map collections can be searched on the Integrated Catalogue, although maps are also found in Manuscripts (see link above). The catalogue of the maps in the India Office Records is not yet available online.
Covers some three and a half million recordings in all genres, from pop, jazz, classical and world music to wildlife sounds, oral history, drama, literature, language and dialect.
Records for over 60,000 journals currently received by the British Library at Boston Spa and our Science, Technology and Business services in London. Some serials in Asian languages are listed in the Integrated Catalogue.
Specialist catalogues
This database includes information and images for selected items from the Library's rich collection of fine bindings of books printed in western Europe from the 15th century to date. It is a work in progress.
Catalogue of the business information held in the British Library’s Business & Intellectual Property Centre at St Pancras: our resource for innovators and entrepreneurs. Contains four sub-sections: market research, company information, trade directories and journals.
Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts
Use this catalogue to explore in depth the British Library's medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. You can view detailed descriptions with images and take tours of the Library's illuminated manuscript holdings.
Evanion Collection of Ephemera
Over 5000 items from the Evanion Collection of ephemera relating to Victorian entertainment and everyday life.
India Office Family History Search
When complete, this database will contain 300,000 brief records for births, marriages, military and naval service, deaths, burials, baptisms, bonds, pensions, wills and brief biographies of Europeans in British India up to 1947.
The holdings of India Office Private Papers, Prints and Drawings, and Photographs within the Library's Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections. The main focus is on the countries of South Asia, although there are also considerable holdings relevant to other parts of Asia and the Middle East.
International Dunhuang Project Catalogue of Silk Road Manuscripts
Over 30,000 manuscripts in the British Library and collections worldwide written in more than 15 languages and scripts from the eastern Silk Road, dating from the second century BC to the 12th century AD.
A searchable database of printed material relating to the Italian learned Academies active in Bologna, Naples, Padua and Siena, 1530-1650, now held in the British Library
Microform Research Collections
A unique and wide-ranging resource, covering material as diverse as medieval manuscripts, annotated proofs of the novels of Charles Dickens, British Home Office papers and records since 1782, and archives of the Soviet Communist Party and State.
Music manuscripts (1600 to 1800) in British and Irish Libraries
Music manuscripts held by the British Library and more than 60 other libraries. The catalogue is searchable by tune as well as by composer and title, and allows you to see and play back the first few notes of the pieces and view images of some of the manuscripts.
Photographically illustrated books
Records for 1,323 books and 15,274 photographs with titles and descriptions, and 320 digital images of original photographs - from 1839 to 1914. Further records will be added in due course.
The photograph catalogues provide a detailed searchable database for locating photographs, photographically-illustrated books and texts relating to photography held in all departments of the British Library
The Sloane Printed Books Catalogue
This catalogue lists books owned by Sir Hans Sloane, whose collection became the basis of the British Museum. Use it to search for books from his library, both those held by the British Library and those held in other libraries, and for additional information on previous owners and manuscript notes.
Use this catalogue to search the 1039 Wolley charters. They range in date from 13th to the 18th century, although the majority are from the mid 13th to the late 14th century. They are mostly concerned with land transfers, wills and marriage settlements.
More than 23,000 19th-century works: available on microfiche.
Chinese printed books and serials
Chinese-language books and serials catalogued after 1993 are included in the UK Union Catalogue of Chinese books which can be searched in simplified characters (GB encoding) or pinyin romanisation.
India Office Records
Access to Archives (A2A) is part of the growing national archives network in the UK. It includes many of the India Office Records catalogues and more will be added.
Japanese printed books and serials
Records for British Library holdings of Japanese-language printed books and serials published since 1969 are included in The UK Union Catalogue of Japanese Printed Books and Serials. Retrospective conversion of records for earlier material is in progress.
Newspapers in Asian languages
Mapping Asia Newspapers catalogue
Most of the British Library's holdings of newspapers in the languages of Asia, the Middle East and North Africa are available on the Mapping Asia Newspapers database. The database does not include newspapers published in Europe or America. The British Library's holdings of Western-language newspapers published in Asia and North Africa are included in the British Library Newspapers catalogue.
Printed Catalogues
While most of the Library's holdings can be found in these online catalogues, some material is not yet accessible online. Some categories of early printed materials, for example, are only listed in printed catalogues or handlists. These include many auction and bookdealer catalogues, pre-1801 London newspapers, newspaper cuttings, and playbills. Guidance about these is given in the Early Printed Collections.
The Library has also published an extensive and diverse range of catalogues of specialist areas of the collections. some of these are available in our Online Shop.
Other libraries' web catalogues
Here are some of the most widely used, freely available library catalogues on the Internet.
