Consortium of European Research Libraries

The Consortium of European Research Libraries (CERL) is a consortium of research libraries, primarily in Europe, that facilitates access to historians with an interest in the history of the book by providing online resources including the Heritage of the Printed Book Database (HPB), the CERL Thesaurus and the CERL Portal. The organisation also holds seminars and workshops and since 1998 has published a periodical called CERL Papers. It was founded in 1992 and since 1994 has been registered in the United Kingdom as a company limited by guarantee, based in London. Its annual general meeting is usually held in November. It is governed by a board of directors and a management team. The chairman was Elmar Mittler (), a German emeritus professor of library science, until November 2011 when he was succeeded by Ulf Göranson (), former chief librarian at the University of Uppsala.

The Heritage of the Printed Book Database, formerly the Hand Press Book Database, as of February 2014^[update] contained almost 5 million entries for books printed during the hand press era, from the introduction of printing technology to Europe around 1450 to the mid-19th century, with descriptions facilitating comparison of variant versions. At that time 41 institutions had contributed entries, which are primarily based on examination of the item rather than on retroconversion of earlier bibliographic entries. The database is continuously updated, primarily by member institutions.

The HPB database was hosted by the US-based OCLC from September 2007 until 2013, and uses OCLC's FirstSearch and Connexion software. Since September 2013 it has been hosted by the German Gemeinsamer Bibliotheksverbund (). Access is limited to CERL member institutions and licencees.

...
Wikipedia