Preserving the World’s Rarest Books is a new programme developed by the Universal Short Title Catalogue team in St Andrews, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in New York. While assembling data for their survey of early printed books in Europe, the St Andrews team became increasingly aware of the complex relationship between rarity and value. Some of the most valued early printed books are indeed not particularly rare, such as Shakespeare’s First Folio or Gutenberg’s Bible, whereas many books that do not survive well are not particularly cherished. This new programme puts the information on rarity held by the USTC team at the disposal of participating libraries, with special care for those items that are documented in five or fewer copies worldwide.
This paper introduces the concept of rarity in the book world, whilst defining the material challenges to a comprehensive survey of early printed books in Europe. It presents the rationale behind the concept of Preserving the World’s Rarest Books, its core methodology and first results, as well as showing how these results can be visually displayed. Particular attention is given to the interaction between our data and its two main groups of users: the libraries participating in the programme, and the visitors of the online database. The paper thus takes into consideration some of the new features of the USTC backend, which have been especially designed in order to optimise our contacts and exchanges with partner institutions. It also introduces some of the new features of the USTC database interface, and how the data deriving from this new programme is made available to our users. Both of these efforts support our final aim to use innovative technology in order to raise awareness around the rarity and preservation of early printed books in the twenty-first century.