Bibliography Timeline Outline

The Earliest Surviving Literary or Library Catalogues
(Circa 2,000 BCE)

The Earliest Surviving Detailed Bibliographical Entries
(Circa 1,400 BCE)

The Earliest Bibliographical Classification System
(Circa 53 BCE – 23 CE)

The First Auto-Bibliography
(Circa 190 CE)

Partial Inventory of the Court Library of Charlemagne at Aachen
(Circa 790)

Inventories of Ninth Century Libraries
(833 – 835)

The Earliest Universal Bibliography
(988 – 990)

Organization of the Sorbonne Library, and the Way it Was Physically Arranged
(1290)

Medieval Union Catalogue of Manuscripts
(Circa 1320)

The Second Catalogue of the Library of the Sorbonne
(1338)

Medieval Union Catalogue of Manuscripts Names 694 Authors
(Circa 1350)

The High Point of Medieval Library Cataloguing
(1389)

The First Catalogue of the Vatican Library
(1475)

The Earliest Subject Bibliography
(1494)

The First Great General Work on Mathematics
(November 10 – November 20, 1494)

The First Printed Bibliography on Secular Subjects
(1495)

A Census of Print Runs for Fifteenth-Century Books
(1500)

The First Legal Bibliography
(1522)

The First General Subject Index
(1548 – 1549)

The First National Bibliography
(1548)

The First Bio-Bibliography
(1562)

The First Catalogue of the Frankfurt Book Fair
(1564)

Possibly the First Printed Catalogue of Any Library
(1572)

The First Printed Catalogue of a Portion of a Public Library
(1575)

The First French National Bibliography
(1584)

The First Systematic Medical Bibliography
(1590)

The First Medical Subject Bibliography
(1591)

The First Published Catalogue of any Institutional Library
(1595)

The First "Books in Print"
(1595)

Model for Subject Bibliographies
(1598)

The First Bibliography Published in the New World
(1606)

Coining the Term Incunabula
(1639)

The First Book on Librarianship in English
(1650)

The Earliest Bibliography of Bibliographies
(1664)

The First Anthology on Libraries and Library Science
(1666)

The First Bibliography of Rare Books
(1676)

Newton's Principia Mathematica
(1687)

The First Attempt to Collect and Organize the Literature of Early Printing
(1688)

The First Independently Published Bibliography of Mathematics
(1688)

The First Book Catalogue Published in America
(1693)

The First Country-Wide Printed Union Catalogue of Manuscripts
(1697)

A Universal Bibliography but Only for "A and B"
(1699)

The First Book Auction Conducted in Paris for Which a Catalogue was Printed
(July – December 1706)

The First Bibliography of Americana
(1713)

The First Periodical Published in English on Rare Books & Manuscripts
(1738)

The First Continent-Wide Union Catalogue of Manuscripts
(1739)

The First Significant Catalogue Raisonne in Western Art History
(1751)

A Typographic Masterpiece, & the First Book Printed Partially on Wove Paper
(May 5, 1757)

Candide, ou l'Optimism
(1759)

The First Book Printed Entirely on Wove Paper
(October 6, 1759 – 1760)

The Beginning of "Modern" Rare Book Cataloguing
(1763 – 1769)

First Catalogue of the British Museum Library
(1787)

Bibliographical Guide to Antiquarian Bookselling and Collecting, With Pioneering Exposition on Rarity
(1790 – 1802)

Proposal for a National Bibliography of France
(1793 – 1794)

The First Comprehensive Bibliography of Technology
(1795)

Celestial Mechanics
(1799 – 1827)

The First Catalogue of the Library of Congress
(April 1802 – October 1803)

The First Practical Manual on Antiquarian Bookselling
(1804 – 1805)

The First Thematic Index of a Composer's Work, Based on Mozart's Own Index
(1805)

"The Best and Last of the General Rare Book Bibliographies"
(1810 – 1865)

The First Extensive Catalogue of the Library of Congress
(November 1815)

The First "Leaf Book"
(1827)

The First Illustrated Antiquarian Bookseller's Catalogue
(1829)

The Earliest Known Printed Dust Jacket (Now Lost)
(1832)

The Greatest Private Collector of Manuscripts in the Nineteenth Century
(1837 – 1871)

Panizzi's 91 Rules for Standardizing the Cataloguing of Books
(1841)

The First Annotated Bibliography of the History of Economics
(1845)

First Installments of the First Government-Sponsored National Union Catalogue of Manuscripts
(1846 – 1849)

The First Separately Published Bibliography on the History of Science
(1847)

Early Proposal for a National Union Catalogue
(1852)

Keyword in Context Indexing
(1856)

The Beginning of Modern Bibliographical Analysis
(April 1870)

The First Catalogue of a Library on Computing and its History
(1872)

Calling for a Central Bibliographical Bureau Which Would Also Store Images
(July 25 – November 29, 1872)

The First Comprehensive Bibliography of the History of Printing
(1873 – 1886)

The Last Library Cataloguing Code Written by One Person
(1876)

The First American Bibliography on the History of Printing
(1877)

The Caxton Quadricentennial Celebration: Probably the Largest Exhibition on the History of Printing Ever Held
(June 30 – September 1, 1877)

Index Medicus Begins
(1879)

A Landmark in Efforts to Organize Information and Make it Searchable
(1880)

The First Complete Catalogue of the British Museum Following Panizzi's Rules
(1881 – 1905)

An Analog Search Engine to Organize All the World's Knowledge
(1895)

The Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature
(1901)

A New Standard for Descriptive Bibliography in the History of Science
(1906)

The First Library of Rare Science Books Formed by an American
(1908)

The Wheeler Gift Catalogue of the History of Electricity and Telegraphy
(1909)

"Die Brucke" and its Goals for a World Information Clearing House
(June 11, 1911 – 1913)

The Literature and Culture of Suicide
(1927)

The Fitzwilliam Museum Exhibition of Printing: Precursor to "Printing and the Mind of Man"
(May 6 – May 16, 1940)

The Library of Congress Catalogue
(1942 – 1953)

The Hinman Collator
(1945 – 1949)

Compiling a Bibliography by Electric Punched Card Tabulating
(1950)

Applying New Technology to the Searching and Storage of Information
(1951)

Early Library Information Retrieval System
(1954)

The Most Voluminous Printed Catalogue of a Single Library
(1959 – 1972)

The Printing and the Mind of Man Exhibition
(July 16 – July 27, 1963)

Probably the First Book Typeset by Computer
(October 6, 1963)

The MARC Cataloguing Standard
(1965 – 1968)

OCLC is Founded
(July 5, 1967)

Probably the Largest Printed Bibliography, Complete in 754 Folio Volumes
(1968 – 1981)

Medline is Operational
(October 1971)

The English Short Title Catalogue
(June 1976)

Origins of Cyberspace
(2002)

OCLC Serves More than 50,000 Libraries, Contains 56 Million Records
(2004)

The Index-Catalogue Goes Online
(May 1, 2004)

The Changing Nature of the Catalogue. . . .
(March 17, 2006)

A Critical Review at the Library of Congress
(April 3, 2006)

OCLC Merges with RLG
(July 1, 2006)

Improving the Research Potential of ESTC
(April 17, 2012)