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What's New
Variant Forms Functionality[March 2008] This release of EEBO sees the addition of another piece of innovative search functionality made possible by the Virtual Orthographic Standardisation project. The new Variant forms checkbox, which appears on the Basic, Advanced and Periodicals Search screens, makes it easy to expand your search so that it retrieves all of the different inflected forms of your search term(s) present in EEBO. For instance, if the box for Variant forms is checked and you type the word murder in the Keyword(s) field, when you submit your search you will retrieve all instances of the word murder together with its inflected forms murdered, murdering, murders etc. This expansion or 'lemmatisation' of your search term is fully interoperable with the existing Variant spellings functionality. Thus if you type the word murder in the Keyword(s) field with the Variant spellings and Variant forms boxes checked, your results will include (i) instances of your original search term murder; (ii) instances of early modern variant forms of your original search term, e.g. murther, murdre, murdir, mvrder; (iii) instances of modern-spelling inflected forms of your search term, e.g. murdered, murdering, murders, and (iv) instances of early modern variant forms of all the various inflected forms of your original search term e.g. murthred, murthrest, murdreth, murdring, murtherynge, murthers. Read more about the CIC CLI Virtual Orthographic Standardisation Project. Variant Spellings Functionality Now Available to All Users[November 2007] From the time EEBO was first released in 1998, users and librarians have been concerned that the inconsistent spellings that occur in early modern English texts would cause users to miss material relevant to their research and thus limit their ability to use the collection to its full potential. Building on research being conducted by Professor Martin Mueller at Northwestern University, the Virtual Orthographic Standardisation Project has developed a tool that allows both expert and non-expert users to search databases such as EEBO using modern English spellings and automatically retrieve instances of extant early modern spelling variants. The project is funded by the Council of Library Initiatives (CLI) of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) with support from ProQuest. Beta versions of EEBO and Literature Online with built-in Virtual Orthographic Standardisation have been made available to users of these resources at 13 member institutions since November 2006 for a period of development and testing. With this release, Virtual Orthographic Standardisation is available to all users of EEBO. This exciting functionality represents a major step forward in searching the early texts in EEBO and Literature Online, and is not currently available in any other commercial products. The Virtual Orthographic Standardisation functionality is very easy to use. A new Variant spellings box, which is checked by default, appears on the Basic Search, Advanced Search and Periodicals Search screens. If you type a search term in the Keyword(s) box and the Variant spellings box is checked when you submit your search, you will automatically retrieve all instances of your search term and its early modern variant forms present in EEBO. For example, if the box for Variant spellings is checked and you type the word murder in the Keyword(s) field, when you submit your search you will retrieve all occurrences of the word murder and its early modern variants murther, murdre, murdir and mvrder. A new Check for variants link, which appears to the right of the Keyword(s) field on the Basic and Advanced Search screens, allows you to browse and manually select particular variant forms of your search term or terms to build a more targeted search query. The new Variant spellings checkbox absorbs and replaces the existing Typographical variants functionality. When you search with the Variant spellings box checked, you will automatically retrieve instances of your search term(s) modified by any of the simple substitutions previously dealt with by the old Typographical variants functionality (i for j and vice versa, u for v and vice versa, and uu and vv for w etc). A future release of EEBO will see the addition of more new functionality that will allow users to lemmatise their search terms. Lemmatisation takes the process of standardisation one step further. It is the linguist's term for the practice of bundling the different forms of a word under the form in which the word is likely to appear in a dictionary. Thus loves, loved and loving are forms of the lemma love. Lemmatisation is part of the Virtual Orthographic Standardisation project, which will allow users to look for all variant spellings of the standard spelling love or search for the lemma love, which would retrieve all variant spellings of the standard spellings love, loves, loveth, loving, and loved. Please contact the EEBO Webmaster if you have any questions about this exciting new project. Improved Search Results Display[November 2007] Users with access to the EEBO Text Creation Partnership collection can now analyse the results of full text keyword searches more quickly and efficiently than ever before. In response to user feedback we have re-engineered the EEBO Search Results display so that it incorporates an integral Context of Matches display. Up to five matches are displayed, with context, as part of each entry on the Search Results display. In many cases this means that the user no longer has to click through to view a separate Context of Matches display on a new screen, and as a result is able to identify the most interesting and relevant full text matches more quickly and effortlessly. Where a search retrieves more than five matches in any given text, a separate Context of Matches display is provided. New Items from STCI Units 76-78[November 2007] Over 340 new works from SCT I (Pollard & Redgrave) are now available online. A sample of titles includes:
New Items from STC II (Wing) Units 126-127[November 2007] Over 860 new works from SCT II (Wing) are now available online, including:
New Items from Early English Tract Supplement[November 2007] Over 2,500 new works from EETS are now available online, including:
New Texts from the Text Creation Partnership[November 2007] Members of the Text Creation Partnership (TCP) have access to a collection of searchable keyed versions of EEBO texts that grows with with each new release of the service made every four months. In this release we have added 1,259 new keyed texts, bringing the total number to 14,948. Some of the new texts available in this release include:
EEBO Enhancements- Thumbnails ...[June 2007] ThumbnailsUsers of EEBO can now view documents in the collection as a series of thumbnail facsimile images, making it much easier to gain an overview of the contents of a particular volume and identify pages containing illustrations, titles and chapter headings, printers' marks, and other suggestive textual features. Up to one hundred thumbnails can be displayed on a single screen, greatly enhancing the experience of working with longer works. Using the new Thumbnails display it is easy to identify the beginning and end of individual plays printed as part of the various folio editions of the works of Shakespeare, for example. In many cases, act and scene divisions are also visible in the thumbnail view. Similarly, when viewing a collection of verse in thumbnail form it is possible to distinguish different stanza forms, pattern poems and longer works in blank verse - see for example the Thumbnail display for Wing M872 (Andrew Marvell, Miscellaneous poems by Andrew Marvell, Esq. ... 1681) or STC 13183 (George Herbert, The temple sacred poems and private ejaculations ... 1633). The Search Results display now incorporates a thumbnail image for each work in EEBO for
which Document Images are available - a miniature version of either the title page of the
volume in question or the first of the Document Images in the relevant set. Clicking this
thumbnail image takes the user to the Thumbnails display. Users can also access the Thumbnails
display by clicking the new Thumbnails icon: Enabling Library BrandingLibrarians and systems administrators can now add their institution's logo to EEBO using a simple new form in the password-protected Administration Resources area under Information Resources. Library Branding appears on most pages in EEBO and can be configured so as to provide your patrons with a link to your library home page. First release of the Early English Books Tract SupplementNow available online are over 7,600 records from the last remaining Early English Books collection - the Tract Supplement - 2,127 of which are available in full image format. The Tract Supplement provides an exceptional perspective on many aspects of 16th- and 17th-century British life. Over the course of many years, small items such as broadsides and pamphlets were often collected into "scrapbooks," or tract volumes, classified by various criteria such as dates or topics. Documents in the collection include proclamations, acts of parliament, letters, epistles, petitions, ballads, sermons, pamphlets, almanacs, catalogs, treatises and more. Additional titles will become available in future releases of EEBO as this large collection of approximately 20,000 items is catalogued and scanned. Some of the titles now online with this first release include:
Case Study - Dr. Georgia Wilder, University of TorontoRead this Case Study (PDF file) for a fascinating view of how Dr. Georgia Wilder uses EEBO in the classroom. Results of the 2006 EEBO in Undergraduate Studies Essay Contest[February 2007] We would like to thank everyone who submitted essays to the 2006 EEBO in Undergraduate Studies Essay Contest and offer our congratulations to the following winners. Grand Prize: Mark Hanin (Yale University) - A Revolution of Political Allegiance: Elkanah Settle and Henry Care First Prize: Danielle Bradley (University of Iowa) - From Fact to Fable: The Book of John Mandeville's 16th Century Fall from Authority Second Prize: Caroline Murray (Bath-Spa University) - The Lord Mayor's Show in Print, 1616-1698 Honorable Mention: Victoria Mason (University of Warwick) - "Unknown but reall:" A Pseudonymous response to Charles II's Coronation Honorable Mention: Niina Pollari (Florida Atlantic University) - Repetition, Echo, Sound: The Connection Between John Milton's "Paradise Lost" and Helkiah Crooke's Descriptions of the Ear in "Mikrokosmographia" You can soon read copies of the winning submissions here. Call For Entries: EEBO In Undergraduate Studies Essay Competition for 2007[February 2007] Announcing the EEBO In Undergraduate Studies Essay Competition for 2007ProQuest LLC and the Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership are sponsoring an essay competition for undergraduate students. The EEBO in Undergraduate Studies Essay Competition Committee is seeking undergraduate research papers that rely on research conducted via the Early English Books OnlineTM collection of primary texts. The Committee consists of professionals and scholars drawn from both industry and academic contributors to EEBO. Essays may reflect the approach of any number of academic disciplines - history, literary studies, philosophy, anthropology, religious studies, and more - or they may be interdisciplinary in nature. The chief requirement is that each paper draws substantial evidence from the works included in Early English Books Online. The Committee will judge the entries using a "blind" review process to select five papers for the following cash prizes. Grand Prize: $1,000 EEBO will contain page images of 125,000 books listed in the Pollard and Redgrave, Wing, and Thomason Tracts catalogs. With its substantial coverage of printed material found in England between 1473 and 1700, EEBO provides rich research possibilities for students interested in a wide variety of topics in early modern studies. The Committee will read and evaluate each properly submitted essay. Criteria for selection include:
All papers must be written by an undergraduate student or students. Any entrant under the age of 18 must have a parent or guardian's permission to enter this contest. The essay should reflect work done between November 1, 2006 and October 31, 2007. Group papers may be submitted provided that all group members meet the contestant criteria and consent to the submission by executing the entry form. Proof of enrollment at a college or university with EEBO access during this time period must accompany each submission. All contestants must be enrolled in an institution with approved access to Early English Books Online. ProQuest LLC is not responsible for the effect an award payment may have on a foreign student's immigration status or eligibility. This offer is void where prohibited by law. Deadline for receipt of essays is October 31, 2007. Prizes will be announced in January 2008. Essays must be the original, unpublished work of the student. Only one essay per individual student or group may be submitted, except that students who submit entries as part of a group may also submit an entry as an individual. All essays become the property of ProQuest LLC, which reserves the right to publish the essays in any form, either electronically or in print. By entering the essay contest, entrants grant further permission to the sponsors to use the entrants name and photo, and to publicize the winning entries as well as the names of all the winning essays, without royalty or additional compensation. The prize winners will be notified by U.S. Mail. The winner or winners must provide proof of identity and may be required to execute an affidavit of Eligibility/Liability and Publicity Release and a statement certifying that all material submitted as part of the entry is original and does not infringe on the copyright, intellectual property, or other right of another person or entity. If a group entry wins the contest, then the prize will be split between all entrants of that group. If a potential individual winner or any member of a winning group fails to return the required documentation within 15 days following attempted notification, the prize will go to the next runner-up. The transfer of prize property will occur as soon as practicably possible, but no later than 90 days after the award is announced. Essay Format and Citation StyleSubmitted essays must consist of no more than 20 pages of written text. All entries must be accompanied by a one-page abstract. The essay must be typed in 12-point type, double-spaced with 1" margins, and the pages numbered. Required cover pages and illustrations are not included in the allotted 20 pages. Each paper must include a bibliography.Each essay must make use of the text(s) found in EEBO. The essay should use EEBO page image numbers when making references to the texts, as follows: In the opening remarks in A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia (1588), Thomas Hariot claims that "There haue bin diuers and variable reportes with some slaunderous and shamefull speeches bruited aroade by many that returned from thence" (Image 3). For all other matters of citation and style, essays must adhere to MLA or Chicago Manual of Style guidelines. No name or identifying references (i.e. school, professor, or author's name) may appear on the essay itself, even though style guides may require such notations. Such information should only appear on the cover page described below. Required Submission MaterialsCover Page: All submissions must include a cover page listing the entrants name(s), college, mailing addresses and phone numbers (both home and school), email address, and title of the paper. This page should be the only page on which the entrant's name appears.Abstract: The second page should not display the entrant's name or any personal information. It should serve as an abstract of the paper and include the following information:
Letter of Eligibility: A letter on school stationery from the Registrar's Office that verifies the entrant's enrollment at the time the paper was written should be included. Materials Submission
EEBO In Undergraduate Studies Essay Competition Neither the Committee nor ProQuest LLC is responsible for lost, late, or misdirected entries. Any entries postmarked or received after the above deadline shall be returned to the entrant. Neither the Committee nor ProQuest LLC is responsible for printing or typographical errors associated with the content or any condition beyond the control of ProQuest LLC or the Committee that may cause the contest to be interrupted. Previous EEBO Enhancements[November 2006] Some of the enhancements that were made to EEBO for this release include:
Single-Character WildcardEEBO now accepts search terms that include a single-character wildcard (?), making it easier to broaden searches and retrieve variant forms of a given term. Substitute any character in your search term with the new wildcard (as in wom?n) and EEBO will find instances of matching words that have any character in the position of the wildcard (such as women and woman). EEBO will also retrieve words in which no character appears in the position of the wildcard, meaning that hono?r will retrieve honour, honovr and honor.The new wildcard is a powerful tool for searching old-spelling texts, particularly when used in conjunction with the truncation wildcard (*). A search for je?lo?s* will retrieve a number of variant forms of jealous and jealousy, for instance jealousie, jelowsye, jelousies and jealosies. This search can be broadened still further using the typographical variants functionality discussed above, which will ensure that variants such as iealosies, iealousies, ielosy and iealosie are also included in your results. Improved Access to Early English Newspapers[December 2005] Some of the earliest extant news publications in the English language are now accessible in EEBO using the Periodicals Search, Browse Periodicals by Date and Browse Periodicals by Title interfaces. EEBO traces the history of English journalism back to its origins, back to the broad sheet publications known as corantos that were published in the Netherlands in 1620 and 1621. Users can now search and browse corantos alongside both the later quarto-format newsbooks (1622-1642) and the vast wealth of periodicals preserved in the British Library's Thomason Tracts collection (1641-1663). Each individual coranto and newsbook is accessible throughout EEBO via a bibliographic record that documents exactly its unique title and date information, making it easy to retrieve particular items when searching. Each is also linked to an additional bibliographic record that groups together associated items according to the various series identified in Folke Dahl's definitive work A Bibliography of English Corantos and Periodical Newsbooks 1620-1642 (London: Bibliographical Society, 1952). These additional records allow users to reconstruct the original serial order in which these publications were issued. For example, users can access images of the newsbook entitled A relation of the King of Svveden, his happie and incomparable successe and victories..., which formed number 22 in a series of newsbooks printed for Nathaniel Butter and Nicholas Bourne from 1629 to 1631, in two ways: via its own bibliographic record, which gives the full title of the individual item and additional notes specific to it, and via a record with the title Newbooks Seventh Series: Printed for Nathaniel Butter and Nicholas Bourne, c.1629-1630 - 29 Nov. 1631., which links to images of all the newsbooks from this series available in EEBO. Both types of record can be searched and retrieved using Basic, Advanced and Periodicals Search interfaces. The Periodicals Search interface allows users to retrieve corantos and newsbooks according to the more granular date information available for all periodicals in EEBO. Links to author pages in Literature Online[December 2005] For users of both Literature Online and Early English Books Online (EEBO) we have been making improvements to both resources that helps bring together these two leading online sources for Early Modern research. Earlier this year we implemented a comprehensive cross-searching facility that allows scholars and students to search EEBO from Literature Online. Searches from the Literature Online Quick Search and Search Texts functions will now also search the entire set of EEBO citation data: your results will include full results from EEBO, and clicking on any of the items in your EEBO results list will link directly to EEBO's facsimile page images in a separate browser window. If your institution has access to the version of EEBO that incorporates keyed full text created by the Text Creation Partnership, you will also see keyword hits from texts within EEBO in your Literature Online search results. More information about this feature is available at Literature Online. In this release of EEBO, links will appear alongside author names on results and records in EEBO for all authors who have Author Pages in Literature Online. This provides EEBO users with instant access to the keyed texts, biographies, bibliographies, critical references and web sites for 1015 authors who appear in both of these resources. Library administrators can get more information about enabling author links to Literature Online at Information Resources.
Recommended Titles[February 2004] Two hundred titles have been specially selected and categorized by subject to help undergraduates get started in EEBO. These titles are recommended as key texts from the collection, as well as for being interesting and representative of the times. Take a look at Information Resources. Linking from the ESTC[November 2004] Early English Books Online is now a target for inbound OpenURL linking, allowing users to link from outbound compatible sources such as the ESTC to items available in EEBO. EEBO is also now Z39.50 compliant. Find out more. Thomason Tracts Completed[November 2004] The Thomason Tract collection of political tracts, broadsides and newspapers is now complete! This invaluable collection of over 22,000 rare items is now fully searchable and browseable in EEBO. Users can browse all of the Tracts in the order in which they were collected, as well as all periodicals alphabetically by title, and chronologically by date of each issue. A new search screen for the Thomason periodicals allows users to search for 400 periodicals and individual issues using criteria such as title, date ranges, editor, and tract number. EEBO's navigation has been updated to account for these new features and make is easier for users to access all of the search and browse screens. In addition, all screens can be bookmarked with a 'Durable URL.' Read more about the Thomason Tracts or view a list of periodicals.
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