About EEBO Interactions

EEBO Interactions: A social network for Early English Books Online

ProQuest is pleased to announce the launch of EEBO Interactions: A Social Network for Early English Books Online (http://eebo-interactions.chadwyck.com/).

EEBO Interactions aims to provide scholars with new ways of engaging with EEBO and with the community of early modernists who use EEBO in teaching and research. The new resource allows its registered users to share commentary, queries, contextual material and links relating to particular works and authors represented in EEBO, and to edit and expand upon existing contributions by other contributors. Direct messaging between registered participants is also supported.

The EEBO Interactions site itself is freely accessible and can be consulted by all users of the internet. The ability to interact with the resource - to add, edit and/or delete submissions - is restricted to its registered users. Registration is open to all authenticated EEBO users and to other scholars on application to the EEBO Interactions webmaster. Moderation of the content of the EEBO Interactions resource is undertaken by a team of independent editors, and occurs after submissions are posted.

Two new icons in the main EEBO service, which appear on the Full Record and Document Image displays, provide direct access to interactions for a particular work or author.

The empty speech bubble icon indicates interaction pages that do not yet feature any submissions by users. Click on the icon to go to EEBO Interactions and start interacting.

When a particular work or author interaction page in the EEBO Interactions site receives a contribution from a user, the speech balloon icon in EEBO is updated to indicate the presence of user-generated content. (Note that the interactions icons in EEBO do not change state instantaneously when the first contribution to an interaction is saved by the contributor - it usually takes a few minutes for the presence of a contribution to be registered within EEBO.)

This new resource has been developed in close collaboration with EEBO users and experts in the field of social networking and user engagement. It is anticipated that the functionality of the EEBO Interactions resource will develop and change in response to feedback from its users, and feedback (via the Interactions webmaster) is welcomed.