ProQuest, part of Cambridge Information Group (CIG), US, has announced a partnership with the UK's National Archives to offer digital access to Colonial State Papers. Until now, researchers wishing to study these documents in full colour had to visit the National Archives. The new project seeks to improve access to these valuable hand-written materials, offering new insight into British trade, history and overseas expansion between the 16th and 18th centuries.
The collection 'CO 1' (Privy Council and related bodies: America and West Indies, Colonial Papers) contains thousands of papers that were presented to the Privy Council and the Board of Trade during 1574-1757. These relate to England's governance of, and activities in, the American, Canadian and West Indian colonies. ProQuest's Colonial State Papers, from ProQuest's Chadwyck-Healy publishing unit, also includes the digitised Calendar of State Papers Colonial - an advanced bibliographic tool. The tool provides more than 45,000 records of bibliographic description, covering not only CO 1, but also documents from many other collections, all relating to the American colonies. It consists of bibliographic entries along with full transcriptions, extracts and abstracts, in fully keyed XML.
All of the documents digitised from CO 1, including a number of contemporary hand-drawn maps, have been reproduced as full-colour, high-quality images directly from the original documents. Images are available for download, and a special viewing tool allows users to zoom in on the page and explore the documents in detail. Users will have a choice of searching or browsing the database and will be able to filter their view to just collection CO 1 or expand it to include all documents recorded in the Calendar of State Papers Colonial. Users can search on document title, place of origin, dates, index terms, keywords and catalogue references.
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