Incunabula in the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology

This digital collection gives some basic information about the 320 incunabula in the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology's collection. Incunabula (from the Latin word meaning swaddling clothes or, figuratively, infancy) are European books printed with movable type during the fifteenth century, that is, during the very beginnings of Western printing. Incunabula represent the formative stages of printing practice when the transition from manuscripts to modern books occurred. The Dibner Library's collection is remarkable in that the majority of the works concentrate on scientific (or more properly, natural philosophy), mathematical, and medical subjects. Almost all of the Dibner Library's incunabula were originally collected by Bern Dibner for the Burndy Library.

The works here are indexed primarily by their "Goff Number," their assigned number in Frederick Richmond Goff's Incunabula in American libraries (New York, 1964). Since almost all of the incunabula came from the Burndy Library gift in 1974-76, Goff will not list these works as being at the Dibner Library. The more recent British Library Incunabula Short Title Catalog (ISTC), will have most of these works listed as being at the Dibner Library (location code Sm(D)L), but there are a few which are still indicated as being at the Burndy Library (code BurL) instead of at the Dibner Library. A few titles are dated after the year 1500; they are included here for completeness' sake because of earlier errors or uncertainties in their actual date of publication.

Only a few of the incunabula in this digital collection currently have images associated with them. Over the course of time we will begin to add images to this collection, so please come back and visit in the future to see what we have added.

These works are available for research in the Dibner Library. To make an appointment to see these works, please contact the staff at 202-633-3872 or at libmail@si.edu.

For more detailed information about individual works, please examine their records in the Smithsonian Institution Libraries' online catalog, SIRIS.

Ronald Brashear
Head of Special Collections and
Curator of Science and Technology Rare Books