NEWS

ProQuest Uncovers and Digitizes Hundreds More Titles From the Dawn of Printing

Over 600 new image titles added to renowned Early English Books Online

ProQuest’s comprehensive collection of Early English Books Online (EEBO) now includes even more exceptional works from the dawn of printing in England from 1473 to 1700, enabling thousands of rare, delicate resources to be accessible online to researchers around the world.

With EEBO’s September 2016 release, scholars can now explore an additional 631 scanned image titles acquired from 27 unique archives, bringing the total to nearly 132,000 titles. A wealth of new content is available in subjects such as poetry and songs; sermons and texts from the Church of Ireland; ordinances, declarations, votes and petitions from the governments of England, Wales and Scotland; materials from the East India Company, Company of Scotland Trading and the Royal African Company; plantation records, gunpowder laws and pieces relating to the plague from North Ireland. In addition, Catalogues of books to be sold by auction by the booksellers of London provide insight on the history of the book trade.

“Our dedicated content acquisitions and editorial team has been steadily adding remarkable new titles every year from library archives, museums and private collections to EEBO,” said Susan Bokern, ProQuest Vice President, Product Management. ”No other single resource for early modern scholarship is as comprehensive as this database, or has the same high impact for researchers in the humanities.”

A 2015 study conducted by the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford (UK) and commissioned by Jisc and ProQuest, showed that both the use and citations of EEBO in research papers has increased steadily since the database was first launched in digital form 16 years ago. According to the study, EEBO citations include those for literature, linguistics, history, philosophy, theology, music, arts, education, mathematics, and science. A copy of the full report can be found here.

Used by students and scholars in thousands of universities and research organizations worldwide, EEBO enables researchers to explore the complete, digitized images of nearly all the works listed in the key bibliographic records of English literature: The Short-Title Catalogue (Pollard & Redgrave, 1475-1640); The Short-Title Catalogue II (Wing, 1641-1700); The Thomson Tracts; and the Early English Books Tract Supplements, as well as original almanacs, pamphlets, musical scores, prayer books and other intriguing works from the early days of printing, using the English Short Title Catalogue as their guide.

http://www.proquest.com