The "Incunabula Short Title Catalogue (ISTC)" is an international database whose setup was initiated by the British Library, London. In 1989 the  Census of Incunabula Germany was established at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek as the German branch of the ISTC. Furthermore, the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Rome, the Bibliographical Society of America, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague and the Bibliothèque Royal Albert Ier in Brussels are involved. The project aims at the establishment and continuous extension of a database in which all surviving prints from the 15th century are catalogued, which were produced in Europe using mobile letters. For every printed work the database contains a short description with bibliographic references, information on all known copies worldwide, as well as links to freely accessible digital copies on the internet.

 

The database currently comprises 29,777 editions (January 2008) and is regularly updated. The online version also contains information on digital reproductions of incunabula which are available on the Internet.

 

The database with the dataset of 1998 is available also on CD-ROM, containing digital images of key pages ( Illustrated ISTC on CD-ROM).