For hundreds of years, letter type made of carved wood or cast metal has been arranged by hand into frames, inked, and pressed onto paper in a process known as letterpressing. Now the pre-1800 surviving letter press material in the British Isles and North America English have been documented and made available online. The Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) launched today with free access through the British Library Web site.

The interesting database catalogs over 460,000 items published between 1473 and 1800, including letterpress books, pamplets, newspapers, serials, advertisements, election handbills and a variety of other printed material. Coverage is primarily from the British Isles and Colonial America, but also covers Canada and territories governed by Britain before 1801.

Before you get too excited, it is a bibliography and not a database of the digitized texts. But it is a possible way to discover interesting source documents from early England and colonial America.