New resource: Early English Books Online
The library recently purchased Early English Books Online. From the publisher’s description:
EEBO contains digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700–from the first book printed in English by William Caxton, through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare and the tumult of the English Civil War.
The collection now contains about 100,000 of over 125,000 titles listed in Pollard & Redgrave’s Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640) and Wing’s Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700) and their revised editions, as well as the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661) collection and the Early English Books Tract Supplement.
Update: Eugene Power’s STC project and EEBO get brief mentions in a fine article on digitization by Anthony Grafton in the current issue of The New Yorker. Of EEBO, Grafton writes:
Massive tomes in Latin and the little pamphlets that poured off the presses during the Puritan revolution schoolbooks, Jacobean tragedies with prompters’ notes, and political pamphlets by Puritan regicides are all available to anyone in a major library.
Purchase of EEBO was made possible by funds from the Library’s Endowment from the National Endowment in the Humanities and support of the Provost for continuing expenses.
*Author ID: 168 Author name: William*