  We present a sample of 1777 bright (9<B<14) metal-poor candidates selected
from the Hamburg/ESO Survey (HES). Despite saturation effects present in the
red portion of the HES objective-prism spectra, the data were recoverable and
quantitative selection criteria could be applied to select the sample. Analyses
of medium-resolution (~2 A) follow-up spectroscopy of the entire sample,
obtained with several 2 to 4 m class telescopes, yielded 145 new metal-poor
stars with metallicity [Fe/H]<-2.0, of which 79 have [Fe/H]<-2.5, and 17 have
[Fe/H]<-3.0. We also obtained C/Fe estimates for all these stars. From this, we
find a frequency of C-enhanced ([C/Fe]>1.0) metal-poor ([Fe/H]<-2.0) giants of
9% +- 2%, which is lower than previously reported. However, the frequency
raises to similar (>20%) and higher values with increasing distance from the
Galactic plane. Although the numbers of stars at low metallicity are falling
rapidly at the lowest metallicities, there is evidence that the fraction of
carbon-enhanced metal-poor stars is increasing rapidly as a function of
declining metallicity. For ~60 objects, high-resolution data have already been
obtained; one of these, HE 1327-2326, is the new record holder for the most
iron-deficient star known.
