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Starting on 12th of August, it will be possible to explore Museum Meermanno’s catalogue online. With this innovation, the museum will be making its book collection and other treasures accessible to an international public. The internet presentation is the culmination of a long-term project in which the separate access points to the different parts of the collection have been integrated into a single system. For the first time, the richness of the collections built up by Baron van Westreenen and his successors at the Museum of the Book will be visible on the internet. Hundreds of thousands of records are already available online, and this number will steadily increase as other parts of the collection are opened up.

‘We expect the catalogue to attract considerable interest from a wide variety of disciplines and backgrounds,’ observes Meermanno’s director, Leo Voogt. ‘From researchers and students to amateur enthusiasts and collectors, whether their interest lies in old prints or modern books, letters and designs or bookplate material. Especially for those interested in book design, this will provide a major new source. For the first time, it will be possible to search by specific aspects of book design, for instance the illustrator, the book designer, or the designer of the binding.’

The catalogue provides access to the following databases:

• Western book art since c. 1450: 70,000 objects: incunabula, post-incunabula and other old prints, auction and antiquarian catalogues, rare and precious works since the nineteenth century, modern bibliophile works, industrial bookbinding, artists’ books, children’s books, illustrated books and relevant reference works.

• 11,000 archives and archivalia on lettering artists, book designers and publishers, book art and typography (with the emphasis on the Netherlands) since 1850: material used in design, proofs, graphic designs, letters, posters, calendars, prospectuses, including the collections of J.F. van Royen, Eugène Strens, W.L. & J. Brusse Publishers, and Van Goor Publishers.

• 330,000 bookplates and small prints, including the Beels, Schelling, Schwencke, Strens and Verster collections (245,000 of which are searchable).

• 10,000 letters from 1870 onwards written by persons including Henri Friedlaender, Christopher Sandford, J.F. van Royen, John Buckland Wright, Lucien Pissarro, A.A.M. Stols, André Gide and Paul Valéry.

• Over 10,000 coins and medals, including 9,000 from classical antiquity.

Meermanno decided to use the software made by Adlib Information Systems, which has been widely applied in the museum and library sectors. This software makes it possible to integrate databases and to search them at different levels. Search results can be saved, printed out, or sent by e-mail. In the longer term the museum intends to add the other collections to this catalogue, including manuscripts, paintings and antiquities. The manuscripts are currently accessible on the website miniatures in illuminated manuscripts are currently accessible online on the website Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts, and Dutch prints from the period 1540-1800 in the STCN (Short-Title Catalogue, Netherlands).

The web catalogue has been made possible by the financial support of Fund 1818 and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science.