Interactive Data Atlas > British Library > Sloane Printed Books Catalogue
About the Project
The Sloane manuscripts collection covers a wide range of subject matter: medicine, alchemy, chemistry, botany and horticulture, exploration and travel, mathematics and natural history, magic and religion.
This collection was formed by Sloane , and purchased at his death from his executors by the Act of Parliament which also established the British Museum. It represents one of the three foundation collections of the British Library. The collection of medical manuscripts has been described as the greatest ever assembled by a single individual, not just in quantity and variety but in the exceptional quality of the individual items.
Most of the manuscripts from this collection have Sloane numbers Sloane MS 1 through to Sloane MS 4100. Two further groups of manuscripts are from Sloane’s collection but bear Additional MS numbers. These are Add MS 5018-5027 and Add MS 5214-5308.
The Sloane charters and rolls are numbered XXXI.1 – XXXIV.1.
British Library has recently created catalogue entries on their main searchable catalogue (from early 2022), for all the Sloane Additional Manuscripts that are albums of drawings, see https://blogs.bl.uk/untoldlives/2021/11/unexpected-items-found-cataloguing-hans-sloanes-natural-history-drawings.html for this project, led by Curator Alexandra Ault in MSS at BL and carried out by Alice Zamboni on internship.
Type of collection, contemporary or historic
The Sloane Manuscripts are available from three (separate) contemporary online resources each one containing separate views of the manuscripts.
- The BL searcharchives.bl.uk contains the full catalogue of the 5,275 manuscripts.
- The BL Illuminated manuscripts contains images and basic data for most Sloane Renaissance manuscripts (467 results).
- The BL Digitised manuscripts contains fully digitised about ten of the Sloane Add MS digitized versions (79 results when searching for Provenance/Acquisition: Sloane).
Information on Digitisation
British Library has images and basic data for most Sloane Renaissance manuscripts from his collection.
Digitised Manuscripts: The site contains many different kinds of manuscripts, archives and documents. Much of the content available here has been digitised as part of the British Library’s digitisation projects.
Illuminated Manuscripts: holds one of the richest collections of medieval and renaissance manuscripts in the world, and aims to provide access to images and information about its manuscripts to students, scholars, and the general public.
Material included in the original collection
The Sloane manuscripts collection covers a wide range of subject matter: medicine, alchemy, chemistry, botany and horticulture, exploration and travel, mathematics and natural history, magic and religion.
Metadata and formats
searcharchives.bl.uk: Title, Collection Area, Reference, Extent, Language, Contents, Custodial History, Related persons
Digitised Manuscripts: Date, Title, Content, Languages, Physical Description (Materials, Dimensions, Script) Ownership, Bibliography
Illuminated Manuscripts: Author, Title, Origin, Date, Language, Script, Decoration, Dimensions in mm, Official foliation, Form, Binding, Provenance, Notes, Select bibliography
Online availability, ways of accessing
British Library have over 5,000 Sloane manuscripts described in their catalogue entries. The Manuscripts are from the online catalogue searcharchives.bl.uk . The Sloane manuscripts (5,275) can be retrieved by the following query:
https://searcharchives.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?fn=search&ct=search&initialSearch=true&mode=Advanced&tab=local&indx=1&dum=true&srt=rank&vid=IAMS_VU2&frbg=&vl(2126785UI0)=issn&vl(2126785UI0)=any&vl(1UI0)=contains&vl(freeText0)=Sloane+MS&vl(boolOperator0)=AND&vl(2604854UI1)=any&vl(2604854UI1)=any&vl(1UI1)=contains&vl(freeText1)=&vl(boolOperator1)=AND&vl(4961882UI2)=any&vl(4961882UI2)=any&vl(1UI2)=contains&vl(freeText2)=&vl(boolOperator2)=AND&vl(drStartDay3)=00&vl(drStartMonth3)=00&vl(drStartYear3)=Year&vl(drEndDay3)=00&vl(drEndMonth3)=00&vl(drEndYear3)=Year&vl(47200252UI4)=all_items&Submit=Search&_ga=2.64839407.1950241401.1638286714-1078023327.1638286714 Digitised Manuscripts: https://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Default.aspx
Illuminated Manuscripts: https://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/
Access (Download)
There is no clear indication of whether the data available for the three separate online portals (catalogues) are available to download or to retrieve via an API.
Usage and citation
The copyright might vary, according to the site: “The audio, video, text, images, or other material made available on the Website by the Library are either protected by the copyright of third parties, are the copyright of the British Library Board, or are materials which are in the public domain or made available under a Creative Commons licence. … Where content is marked as Creative Commons content, either the British Library owns copyright or database rights and wishes to share the content in support of our mission to support access to knowledge, or else the content has been licensed by third parties under a Creative Commons licence. You may freely use such content for non-commercial purposes as long as you acknowledge the British Library Board or relevant third party as the owner of the material.”
Further information
There are also two pdfs that act as finding aids to Sloane Manuscripts (Add MS) – see the links at near the bottom of the following page https://reconstructingsloane.org/sloanes-library-and-printed-books/
Contact Person
Alison Walker, Scot McKendrick, Limper-Herz, Karen, Frame, William, Harrison, Julian, Ault, Alexandra, Mia Ridge. Please feel free to contact them directly, or otherwise contact us to bring you in touch.
