Yale Joins Partnership for Early English Books Online (EEBO)

[Ann Okerson <ann.okerson@YALE.EDU>]

The Yale community now has full access to 96,000 works from Bell &
Howell's Early English Books Online (EEBO).  EEBO is an image database
based on the Bell & Howell (formerly UMI) microfilm collections (Early
English Books 1475-1640 and Early English Books 1641-1700).  These film
collections are, in turn, based on the Short Title Catalogues compiled by
Pollard & Redgrave (STCI) and Donald Wing and his successors (STCII).  
The later collection (1641-1700) also includes the Thomason Tracts.  B&H
is busily trying to locate and film copies of the remaining works (the
total is somewhere between 125,000 and 160,000 items).

Yale Library has also joined a group of major research libraries in a
partnership to support the creation of a full-text, fully searchable
version of a significant portion of the EEBO image collection. The
business plan calls for conversion of 25,000 texts over a five-year period
with possible further conversion to be carried out after that time.  
Working and advisory groups from the partner institutions will make
decisions regarding content selection, presentation, and functionality.
Each member library is contributing $10,000 per year for five years to
realize the conversion effort.  As of January 2000, the number of partners
had reached 43; the goal is 150 worldwide library members.  BHIL will
match the partners' funds at a 20% level, for a $9million dollar project
overall.  Joining the partnership achieved for the early adopters a
significant discount for access to the digital collection.  The member
libraries will share in the ownership of the digitized text files.

The access/partnership arrangement was marketed to consortia, and Yale's
participation in EEBO is via NERL, the NorthEast Research Libraries
consortium.  Other NERL participants in EEBO include:  Columbia
University, Cornell University, Harvard University, Rutgers University,
Temple University, University of Pennsylvania, as well as Boston College
and Vassar College.

The key contact at Yale for this database is Margaret (Maggie) Powell
(Margaret.Powell@yale.edu), Yale's Librarian for Literature in English and
Commonwealth Studies. She serves as Yale's primary representative to this
project.  For more information, and to try out EEBO, go to the "Databases"
page on the Library Resarch Workstation and find EEBO in the alphabetic
list of databases.  Or go directly to

http://www/library.yale.edu/pubstation/databases/EEBO.html

You will need to download a viewer for the image files; please contact
your friendly local librarian or staffer if you need help initially
in accessing the collection.


Ann Okerson
Associate University Librarian, collections and technical services
Ann.Okerson@yale.edu