REMOTE ACCESS AND WEB RESOURCES
Remote Access
The majority of the Company’s historical records have now been digitised, and are available through the Adam Matthew online resource Literary Print Culture: The Stationers' Company Archive. This a subscription-based resource which is accessible via many university libraries, and to readers at the British Library. Members of the Stationers’ Company have free access to this resource; first log into your account, then click here for access.
A microfilm edition of a large number of the Company’s historic records, The Records of the Stationers' Company 1554-1920, was published by Chadwyck-Healey in 1986. These 115 reels of microfilm provide access to the majority of the Company’s administrative and financial records from this period. The microfilm is available to researchers at selected libraries in Great Britain and overseas; please contact the archivist for further details.
Web Resources
A searchable database of entries in the Stationers' Company Register between 1557 and 1640 is freely accessible at The Stationers' Register Online (https://stationersregister.online/).
The edited transcripts of the Register produced by Edward Arber (for the years 1554-1640) and Eyre and Rivington (1640-1708) have been scanned in various university library digitisation projects, and the scans are avaible online via the Internet Archive and the Hathi Trust Digital Library. For more information about how to access these volumes, and other scanned texts relating to the history of the Stationers' Company, see http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/
Our membership records concerning apprentices and Freemen of the Company can now be consulted via The Records of London's Livery Companies Online (ROLLCO) at http://www.londonroll.org/. A collaboration between the Centre for Metropolitan History and several of London's Livery Companies, ROLLCO is a fully searchable database of Livery Company membership over time. ROLLCO will be of particular interest to family historians, genealogists and biographers.
ROLLCO is completely free to use. Some other, freely accessible resources which you may find useful are :
- The London Book Trades, a database containing biographical information on printers, booksellers, bookbinders, stationers, and those in associated trades who worked in and around London from the introduction of printing into England until about the year 1830 (http://lbt.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/mediawiki/index.php/Main_Page)
- The BRITISH BOOK TRADE INDEX (BBTI) which includes brief biographical and trade details of all those who worked in the English and Welsh book trades up to 1851(http://bbti.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/)
- The Scottish Book Trade Index which lists the names, trades and addresses of people involved in printing in Scotland up to 1850 (https://www.nls.uk/catalogues/scottish-book-trade-index)