About the Beyond the Shelf Collection

The titles selected for Beyond the Shelf are included in J. Winston Coleman’s landmark compilation of Kentuckiana, A Bibliography of Kentucky History, published in 1949 by the University Press of Kentucky in Lexington.

In 1945, Kentucky historians persuaded bibliophile and historian John Winston Coleman to assemble a bibliography of Kentucky history. At the beginning, neither Coleman nor anybody else had a clear concept of the volume or variety of writings about the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Coleman, an indefatigable collector of Kentuckiana, possessed an appreciable knowledge of the location and identification of titles. Within three years, he produced an impressive bibliography with proper annotation and classification. There is but a slender list of titles that were either overlooked by Coleman or were unknown to exist in 1948.

A Bibliography of Kentucky History, includes 3,571 titles divided into 76 categories, including county histories; early explorations and settlements; military expeditions, battles and campaigns; reminiscences, recollections and memoirs; and speeches and debates. For researchers, Coleman’s work is the indispensable starting point.

Since 1992, the UK Libraries have participated in the NEH-funded SOLINET/ASERL Cooperative Preservation Microfilming Projects. 3,500 titles in 6,500 volumes from the Libraries’ comprehensive Kentuckiana collection have been filmed during this Project. The UK Libraries selected approximately 1,500 titles from Coleman’s Bibliography. This corpus of microfilmed titles will form the target collection for Beyond the Shelf.

Using the microfilm as the target collection for the KYVL Kentuckiana Digital Library logically extends the University’s and KYVL’s missions to improve or enhance access to specialized materials for a diverse learning environment. The process used to select, produce and store the microfilm conforms to well-established standards for quality and well-embraced principles for selection of significant collections for preservation funding. With the source documents secured in UK Libraries Special Collections or at KDLA, and the informational content preserved in high quality film; the next logical step is to broaden access to Coleman’s Bibliography by converting the microfilm to digital formats.