Early English Books Online (EEBO)
We are pleased to announce our latest digital library acquisition, Proquest’s Early English Books Online (EEBO) – a digital collection of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700.
EEBO aims to include the total surviving published record of the English-speaking world for 227 years in digital format, reproducing images of every page of over 100,000 books, pamphlets and broadsides published in England and her colonies in any language during that span. Once it reaches its projected 125,000 titles, the digital library will contain more than 22 million pages.
The database is fully searchable by author, title, printer, publication, type of illustration and subject headings. An advanced interface makes it easy to build Boolean queries; limit a search to a specific source library, language, or collection; review search histories; and combine previous sets of results. EEBO is also browsable by subject, so one can look at the complete collection of materials relating to, for example, the Magna Carta, criminal law, international law or real property.
The text and illustrations are displayed as images of the printed pages. Individual pages may be printed from the browser, as individual PDFs or as TIFFs. Whole titles may be printed, though the process is not obvious. To print more than one page of a title (”document set”), first “Add this record to your Marked List” by checking the box next to that text, then go to the “Marked List” via the link near the top of the page. From there you may print out part or all of the document as a PDF.
Legal researchers will find this library invaluable. Among the gems are texts by Coke, Fitzherbert, Pulton, West, Rastell, Fortescue, Littleton, Saint German, Grotius, Plowden, Selden, Hobbes, Hale, Swinburne, Bacon, Sheppard, Wingate and Gentili, among many others.
Of course, EEBO is more than a traditional legal research tool. The collection covers everything 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, Interregnum and the Restoration. Among the thousands of titles featured in EEBO are works by Malory, Bacon, More, Erasmus, Boyle, Newton, Galileo; musical exercises by Henry Purcell and novels by Aphra Behn; prayer books, pamphlets, and proclamations; almanacs, calendars, and many other primary sources.
EEBO is a subscription database, available to current students, faculty and staff of Lewis & Clark Law School, College and Graduate School. To access Early English Books Online use these links or go to the Boley Law Library home page at http://lawlib.lclark.edu/ and click on Databases and Indexes. Off-campus users will need to enter their L&C e-mail username and password.
Find out more about the series that make up EEBO. For assistance with Early English Books Online or if you have any questions, please contact a reference librarian at (503) 768-6688 or lawlib@lclark.edu or stop by the Reference Desk.
