Cambridge, UK, 08 February, 2007 - ProQuest Information and Learning's Early English Books Online (EEBO) has recently been purchased by five major university libraries in The Netherlands, among them the oldest and largest universities in the country. The agreements with Leiden University, University of Amsterdam, University of Groningen, University of Nijmegen and University of Utrecht represent a major milestone for researchers in The Netherlands, and for researchers at all major faculties of the participating universities.

“I’m extremely happy to be able to offer this database to the Faculty of Humanities at our university” said Nol Verhagen, Chief Librarian at the University of Amsterdam. “It brings the contents of numerous libraries and archives to the desktops of our researchers, teachers and students. Even more importantly, it enhances access to hundreds of thousands of old books, facilitating new ways of Humanities research. I’m sure that this purchase will make many Humanities professors happy people."
The Licensing Agency for Higher Education in the Netherlands – SURFdiensten B.V. – supported the libraries in obtaining the licence for EEBO.
“We are delighted that SURFdiensten B.V. has supported this collection, which will open new avenues for research in a variety of academic disciplines,” said Mary Sauer-Games, vice president of publishing at ProQuest Information and Learning. “As an example, from this collection of rare primary resources, New Historicists can identify cultural practices from original documentation; textual scholars can examine text changes across multiple editions through enhanced search features such as the "search using typographical variants" functionality, which allows the user to include early variants of their search terms in their results.”
ProQuest’s EEBO presents classic early English works as they appeared in their original format. From the first printed edition of the Canterbury Tales to the works of Shakespeare and Spenser, this collection contains over 100,000 titles beginning with the earliest printed works in the English language.
Libraries possessing this collection are able to fulfil the most exhaustive research requirements of graduate scholars – from their desktops – in many subject areas, including: English literature, history, philosophy, linguistics, theology, music, fine arts, education, mathematics, and science.

Notes for Editors

If you would like further product information please e-mail marketing@proquest.co.uk

For more information on SURFdiensten B.V., contact J Janssen on +31 (0) 30 298 30 19 or visit www.surfdiensten.nl

 

About Early English Books Online 

Early English Books Online™, 1475-1700 (EEBO) provides digital access to more than 100,000 literary and historical classics. Through the Web, researchers can view images that accurately reflect the way the works appeared in their original printed editions.

EEBO contains images of works by authors such as Malory, Spenser, Bacon, More, Erasmus, Boyle, Newton, and Galileo. The database also includes musical exercises by Henry Purcell, novels by Aphra Behn, and prayer books, pamphlets, proclamations, almanacs, calendars, and many other primary resources.

When complete, EEBO will contain all the works, more than 22 million pages, represented in the microfilm series Early English Books I & II, which include the titles listed in these comprehensive bibliographic records of English literature: The Short-Title Catalogue (Pollard & Redgrave, 1475-1640); The Short-Title Catalogue II (Wing, 1641-1700); The Thomson Tracts, a compendium of broadsides on the English Civil War printed between 1640 and 1661; and The Early English Books Tract Supplements. For further information, visit http://eebo.chadwyck.com/marketing

If you would like further product information please e-mail marketing@proquest.co.uk