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Gale's Biggest Digitization Project Ever Covers Eighteenth Century Twenty million pages delivered over the Web is a boon to researchers, historians
June 14, 2002, ATLANTA -- Gale, a business unit of the Thomson Learning division of The Thomson Corporation (NYSE:TOC, TSX: TOC), has announced plans to publish a digital edition of The Eighteenth Century, the world's largest library of the printed book. Believed to be the most ambitious single digitization project ever undertaken, nearly 150,000 English-language titles published between 1701 and 1800 will be available over the Web beginning June 2003. In cooperation with the British Library, a variety of other major research libraries and the English Short Title Catalogue committee, Gale will scan more than 12,000 reels of microfilm, ultimately delivering 20 million text-searchable pages. Searching will be supported by hit-term highlighting and downloadable MARC records, which are key features of digital scholarly research. Additional metadata, including the full text of Title and Content pages and direct access to all illustrations, will also be available. "This library is fundamental to the creation and understanding of the modern Western world," said Mark Holland, publisher in Gale's United Kingdom office. "The Eighteenth Century --Complete Digital Edition makes research far more convenient and far faster. However, just as important is the rich functionality of the database. It will permit new research and teaching opportunities to a greatly expanded community of students, teachers and historians world-wide." The Eighteenth Century -- Complete Digital Edition will be published in subject categories and released over a three-year period. The initial release of History and Geography will occur in mid-2003. It will be followed by Literature and Language; Social Science; Religion and Philosophy; Science, Technology and Medicine; Law; Fine Arts and Reference categories. Modules of the complete database will be available to libraries supporting study and research in specialized subject areas. Mr. Holland noted that Gale is working to stay consistent with the standards set by the Text Creation Partnership, based at the University of Michigan. "We'll work to identify a selection of the most valued texts for full-text re-keying," he said. Gale has been aggressively expanding its collection of digital edition of prized archives. The agreement with the British Library comes on the heels of one with The Times (London) to publish a complete digital edition of that newspaper's archives from 1785 through 1985. The company is also working with the Winston Churchill archives to microfilm a million documents spanning the statesman's life. For more information on The Eighteenth Century -- Complete Digital Edition visit Gale on the Web at www.gale.com. |
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© 2008 Gale.
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