Livros Portugueses

The National Bibliographic Database - PORBASE - is the on-line Union Catalogue of the Portuguese Libraries. PORBASE was created in 1986. It is run by the National Library (BN) and is available to users since May 1988.

PORBASE is at present the largest bibliographic database in the Country and it reflects not only the National Library's collections but also the collections of 125 other Portuguese libraries, of all sorts and sizes, both public and private.

The preset dimension of the Database is close to 800,000 records, including also about 200 000-authority records. The average annual growth of the Database, which is updated daily, is over 120 000 bibliographic records.

The largest part of the represented bibliography is in Portuguese (56%), followed by English (18%), French (14%), Spanish (5%), German (2%) and others (5%);

Concerning the Portuguese bibliography, the Database contains records of all publications received by Legal Deposit since 1935. This chronological coverage is under constant growth due to retrospective cataloguing program, which is being undertaken. For ancient materials, that is to say, materials prior to 1800, they are being downloaded in sections and also involved in the retrospective-cataloguing plan. At present, the incunabula and the Portuguese printed materials from the 16th century have been already included in PORBASE. The 17th and 18th centuries and the foreign printed materials from the 16th century are being prepared to be also included at a later stage.

Searching the PORBASE can be done in several languages, including Portuguese and English: