ProQuest, part of Cambridge Information Group (CIG), US, has announced an agreement with Gale, part of Cengage Learning, US, to connect their respective digital research databases of early modern English books via cross-search technology. These databases are in use at more than 200 universities worldwide.
In 2008, a search in ProQuest's Early English Books Online (EEBO) will provide bibliographic search results from Gale's Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) for mutual subscribers, and vice versa. EEBO and ECCO are digital collections of nearly every printed work from the late 15th through the 18th centuries, and are considered to be among the world's most valued research collections. The latest agreement is seen to streamline serious research in literature, humanities, history and a variety of cultural studies.
EEBO, the first project in ProQuest's Digital Vault Initiative, includes more than 100,000 literary and historic works from 1475 to 1700. Published digitally by Gale in 2003, ECCO captures more than 28 million pages of books, dictionaries and directories - in fact, almost everything printed in England between 1700 and 1800. The over 120,000 books in ECCO contain key works of the age of Enlightenment, the provocative documents that surrounded the American and French revolutions, and landmark writings of STM discoveries from the Age of Reason. Sourced from the leading libraries of the world, all the works in ECCO are fully text searchable, and include high resolution images and bibliographic metadata.
Libraries that have purchased both EEBO and ECCO can activate cross-searching at no charge. Once activated, the technology requires only a single search to access and view more than four centuries' worth of relevant documents in their original form on a desktop.
More News in this Theme
