Gale/Cengage has generously added access to ECCO in addition to access to the Burney Collection of Newspapers through October, 2009. These resources can be accessed by clicking on this link or by clicking on the Pages link on the sidebar, “Accessing Burney and Ecco.”
Access to both of these valuable text-bases will allow for a larger pre-roundtable preparation for Eleanor’s session at EC/ASECS. And we will have a few weeks after that session to explore these textbases with an eye to preparing for a second roundtable discussion at ASECS in March. Thank you Gale/Cengage!
Early Modern Online Bibliography 
September 9, 2009 at 6:22 pm |
Thanks, Gale-Cengage and Anna!.
I would also like to recommend Rob Hume’s piece, “The ECCO Revolution,” that appears on the link to ECCO. Rob’s piece provides an excellent examination of the ways ECCO and similar tools such as Burney have revolutionized the possibilities for scholarship. He also notes the benefits of this tool for students and our teaching. (He’s right that it is far easier to have students use a database than microfilm or even traditional reserved reading.) Near the end of the piece he also addresses some of the problems and shortcomings.
LikeLike
September 9, 2009 at 9:53 pm |
Rob’s piece is the best overview we have, so anyone first approaching ECCO will benefit from reading it. The examples he cites of both ECCO’s power and its limitations are characteristically illuminating.
AB
LikeLike
September 9, 2009 at 10:37 pm
Yes, I think it’s important to recognize how much we have gained by these tools, and Rob’s remarks do justice to the remarkable new avenues these resources afford scholars.
The improvements made to ECCO with the introduction of ECCO II also indicate a willingness to improve these tools where possible.
LikeLike
September 12, 2009 at 11:38 pm |
I’ve been doing some work on ECCO I and II, in preparation for a conference coming up real soon, and found that I was more familiar with the ECCO II interface than ECCO I. Now your discussions of the various types of interfaces has piqued my interest. Where’s the best place to understand the differences between the interfaces for each collection? Thanks, DM
LikeLike
September 13, 2009 at 2:24 am |
Hi, Dave
The new interface for ECCO (which is not tied to the collections an institution owns) did not become avalable until this year, coinciding with the release of ECCO II. Ninety percent of ECCO II was released in February (or perhaps it was January 2009), and the remaining records will be available late this year–and perhaps even have been added by now.
An institution who owns ECCO could have the new interface at no cost (whether or not it was purchasing ECCO II). Most have or will be adopting the new interface–so I am not surprised that you are more familiar with the new one.
What caused the flurry of questions about differences in interfaces arose when the trial link that Gale gave EMOB was to the old interface. Because this old link also returned the correct results for a search Sayre was trying to do, I then assumed that West Chester had not fully adopted the new interface. As I describe below, the new interface offers more tools and simultaneous searches with EEBO if owned–and I clearly saw that I had had access to this material and search capability via the West Chester library page (remot or on campus) since February or March. Yet, I thought my institution may not have had a full conversion because I would have thought the search Sayre and I both tried in what was indeed the new interface would not have failed yet have worked if using the old interface. The Gale tech people are investigating why and will be informing us. They did mention it might not be a search issue but an indexing issue–and said if that was the case Scott would be involved and let us know (I have no further info at this point, Anna, on the indexing issue–the tech person asked that we be patient and give him a few days to see what was what. I will definitely follow through, but I wanted to give Gale some time to do the research.)
I would say that the Gale site is the best place to understand the differences between old and new at this point (the new interface has not been around that long); click here for the Gale document that overviews the features of the new interface. Yet a prime difference is the addition of “research and teaching tools” such as an image gallery and brief historical contexts essays on roughly 15 topics. As you no doubt do know, Dave, if an institution has EEEBO, as well as ECCO, then one can perform searches simultaneously across both databases.
Slated to be available this past June, the MARC records (complete with Library of Congress subject headings and expanded title field) are not part of the purchase price of ECCO II. I assume that these records have been given to purchasing institutions by now.
I know that West Chester put in a request to purchase Burney this June, but the budget situation in Penna. has cast uncertainty on all our state university budgets, and these library purchasing requests are on hold for now. We will eventually be requesting ECCO II–but it will be down the road.
LikeLike
September 16, 2009 at 8:41 am |
So far, we have addressed primarily literary questions pertaining to ECCO and Burney. It would round out our discussions if we could hear more from scholars from other disciplines about how these text-bases meet needs–or about what might be done to better meet scholarly needs.
AB
LikeLike
September 17, 2009 at 7:03 pm |
Anna and all,
You are right that mostly literary scholars have replied to posting about the uses of these databases (Gloria Eive in music offers one exception).
Yet although I am based in literature, I have found these tools incedibly helpful for introducing students to the broader production of texts in the period–and teexts that are not always “literary”. They have also been crucial in my work as a book historian.
LikeLike
September 20, 2009 at 3:16 am |
[…] of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century newspapers is available on a free trial basis through Early Modern Online Bibliography until the end of October. Anna Battagelli usefully points out that Gale’s Eighteenth-Century […]
LikeLike
October 29, 2009 at 10:17 am |
[…] of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century newspapers is available on a free trial basis through Early Modern Online Bibliography until the end of October. Anna Battagelli usefully points out that Gale’s Eighteenth-Century […]
LikeLike
October 29, 2009 at 11:20 am |
I’ve tried the ECCO II link repeatedly, but the search function never works. Has anyone else encountered this? Only two days left!
LikeLike
October 29, 2009 at 12:28 pm |
Hi Katie:
I do not think we have access to ECCO II. Wish
we did!
AB
LikeLike