In the 19th century, the holdings of incunabula from the Wallraf Collection , the Gymnasiaum Library, also from the Syndicate Library and some other collections (e.g. the Mevissen Collection ) were separately listed in the former scientific municipal library and recorded in a handwritten catalogue, which, however, does not contain any more specific statements, e.g. on provenances, bindings etc.

Today the University and City Library of Cologne owns about 2350 prints of the 15th century. Around 600 of these editions (available in approx. 740 copies) have been printed in Cologne; prints from Basel, Strasbourg, Nuremberg and from other German, Dutch and northern Italian printing locations are also available.

Approximately 385 of these prints are already available as full digitised documents on the internet today; they were digitised with DFG funds in 2005/06 and indexed in the "Distributed Digital Incunabula Library" in cooperation with Prof. Manfred Thaller at the Historisch-Kulturwissenschaftliche Informationsverarbeitung (HKI) ("Historical-Cultural Science Information Processing").  Since 01.08.2015 the server of the " Verteilten Digitale Inkunabelbibliothek " has been out of operation.
The digitised documents of the University and City Library Cologne can still be reached via: https://ub.uni-koeln.de/en/collections-specializations/incunabula 
The digitised documents of the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel can be reached via the digital service at: http://www.hab.de/de/home/wissenschaft/forschungsprofil-und-projekte/verteilte-digitale-inkunabelbibliothek.html

The Cologne incunabula are successively processed, placed on the net and the digitised documents are recorded with short descriptions in the OPAC. As well as improving availability and usability, this also helps to conserve the holdings and secure the prints.

The UCL Cologne owns two copies of the extremely rare blockbooks of the 15th century:

• Apocalypse (Main region around 1465)
• Biblia pauperum (Netherlands around 1465)

Blockbooks are made from wooden blocks, which are hand-printed with rubbers. The double sheets are usually printed on one side only, folded and glued together. They may contain text and image from a printing block, only image representations supplemented by handwritten texts, or more rarely text and image printed in two passes. The production time of the European block books is presumed to be between 1460 and 1530, i.e. quite parallel to the expansion of printing with movable metal type. Fabrics printed with wooden stamps and single-sheet prints, playing cards and similar commercial prints had already been produced before.

Today, 33 works are known, about 100 of them have survived. In addition to religious themes (e.g. Biblia pauperum), they include calendars and textbooks. Wikisource contains a compilation of digitally available blockbooks. The Munich State Library provides a database of blockbooks from Bavarian collections in which the watermarks are also displayed.

The listed works are from the handset of the former "Distributed Digital Incunabula Library" (VdIB), which we provide digitally:

• Campbell, Marinus Frederik Andrés Gerardus : Annales de la typographie néerlandaise au XVe siècle / [Hauptband]. - LaHaye : Nijhoff, 1874. - XII, [6], 629 S. Katalog für niederländische Inkunabeln
   
• Campbell, Marinus Frederik Andrés Gerardus : Annales de la typographie néerlandaise au XVe siècle/ / Suppl. 1 - 4
   
• Cappelli, Adriano: Lexicon Abbreviaturarum. - 2., verb. Aufl. . - Leipzig : Weber , 1928 . - LXVI, 543 S. : Ill. Ein Wörterbuch für lateinische und italienische Abkürzungen, wie sie in Urkunden und Handschriften besonders des Mittelalters gebräuchlich sind.
   
• Voulliéme, Ernst: Der Buchdruck Kölns bis zum Ende des fünfzehnten Jahrhunderts. - Bonn : Behrendt, 1903. - 134, 543 S. Ein Beitrag zur Inkunabelbibliographie
   
• Ennen, Leonard [Hrsg.]: Katalog der Inkunabeln in der Stadt-Bibliothek zu Köln / hrsg. von Leonard Ennen. - Köln : Greven 1. A. Einzelne Blätter. B. Kölnische Drucke bis zum Jahre 1500. - XXVI, 150 S.
   
• Schmitz, Wolfgang: Die Überlieferung deutscher Texte im Kölner Buchdruck des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts. Köln 1990, 549 S.

Extent: approx. 600 Objects
Status: under construction
Creation of the scans: Project-related digitization of the UCL Cologne
Scanner: book cradle with an opening angle of 45° controlled by a Nikon DXM 1200
Format: DIN A5 - DIN A3
Quality Control and Web Presentation: Collection Management of UCL Cologne

Sequential sheet numbering

The structure of a print can be recognised from the ending of the scan: