Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Thomas James' Ecloga Oxonio-Cantabrigiensis: An Early Printed Union Catalog, Richard Clement

Richard W. Clement

Thomas James (1572-1629), first Keeper of the Bodleian Library at Oxford, produced the first printed union catalog of manuscripts. The Ecloga Oxonio-Cantabrigiensis (1600) covers the manuscript holdings of the colleges of the two universities at Oxford and Cambridge. James's methods in dealing systematically with each codex are illustrated by comparing the Ecloga with the 1589 shelflist of Corpus Christi Oxford, and with the 1574/75 register of Matthew Parker's library at Corpus Christi Cambridge. The elements of the Ecloga main entries are analyzed and discussed, as are the indices that provided the necessary access points to the collections.