Consultation
of incunabula online
How does one media
revolution join another? Through our digital posture, we can
experience the newness of the printing press, capturing the attention
of late medieval Europe. We can erase not only the time
separating us from the 15th-century, but also the distance separating
us from the physical collections as well as the restrictions of library
schedules, by consulting and reading incunabula from where we sit, or
from wherever we carry a mobile digital communication device. We
can compare typefaces, page layouts, abbreviations, punctuation,
spelling, etc. The first group of links features collections of
digital facsimiles or of actual incunabula or a single such volume
which can be read cover-to-cover online. The scond leads to
collections where we can consult only selected pages of
incunabula. Other extensive collections permitting the
consultation of early book (some medieval) are:Analytic Bibliography of On-Line Neo-Latin Texts
Large Digital Libraries of Pre-1800 Printed Books in Western Languages (Archivalia)
This the thrid page of the Andy Holt Virtual Library's section devoted to 15th-century printed books. The second page contains lists and catalogs testifying to the presence of these books all over the world.