The Beinecke has over 3,500 incunables and is actively collecting, making it one of the richest collections in North America.  We specifically collect annotated copies, many of which can be found in the Rosenthal Collection of printed books with manuscript annotations.  We also possess significant holdings documenting the history of women in the early modern period, including the Erdmann Collection of sixteenth-century books by, for, and about women. In addition to the incunables in the Beinecke, both the Law Library and the Medical Library also have significant holdings.  The Medical Library’s collections can be accessed via Orbis (as can the Beinecke’s) and the Law Library’s collections can be accessed from Morris.  All of the incunables acquired by the Beinecke before 1990 can be found in the Incunabula Short Title Catalog (ISTC) at the British Library.  We are currently updating the ITSC with materials acquired over the past twenty years.

We are participating in Scott Husby’s Census of Bookbindings on Incunables as project of the Bibliographical Society of America, available here.