National Library of Australia - Gateways

ISSN 1443-0568 | no. 70 | August 2004


New Archive: Eighteenth Century Collections Online

Title page of Eighteenth Century Collection Online brochure (Thomson Gale: Michigan, 2004)
Title page of Eighteenth Century Collection Online brochure (Thomson Gale:
Miichigan, 2004)
[CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE]

The National Library is delighted to announce the acquisition of one of the most exciting online archives available. Eighteenth Century Collections Online is a digitised library of nearly 150 000 English and foreign-language titles published in the United Kingdom during this period, together with much of importance from America. Comprising more than 33 million pages, able to be accessed with sophisticated searching capabilities, this collection provides an unequalled opportunity for researchers in many disciplines.

Here is the Age of Reason in the full splendour of its major protagonists in such works as the sermons, satires and pamphlets of Swift and Pope and Paine. In fact, 28 major eighteenth century authors, including Edmund Burke, Henry Fielding and Benjamin Franklin, have all their works included in the collection. There are even multiple editions of some works, to enable researchers to compare the various editions. Women writers of the eighteenth century are also well represented and there are collections on the French Revolution too.

The digital archive is produced by the Gale Group and is based on their microfilm product
The Eighteenth Century,
which was issued by Primary Source Microfilm over a 20-year period. It was based on The English Short Title Catalogue, a machine-readable union list of the holdings of the British Library, as well as those from more than 1500 university, private and public libraries worldwide. The National Library holds nearly half the microfilm product, which may still be used and is also available for interlibrary loan.

A page from Eighteenth Century Collection Online brochure (Thomson Gale: Michigan, 2004)
A page from Eighteenth Century Collection Online brochure (Thomson Gale:
Miichigan, 2004)
[CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE]

The tremendous benefit of the digital archive over the microfilm collection is the extensive searchability. The collection is organised in seven subject areas: history and geography; fine arts and social sciences; medicine, science and technology; literature and language; religion and philosophy; law; and general reference. Searching can be restricted to one subject area, or spread over as many areas as desired.

Search options include ‘basic’ and ‘advanced search’, ‘browse authors’ and ‘browse works’.  If desired, searches may be limited to works published in a particular year or range of years. One option of great delight to many researchers is the ability to search the full text of works for a specific word or phrase; the results have the search term highlighted, and the actual pages containing the term are listed at the side of the results screen for each work found. This means that it is possible to see exactly which authors of that period used a particular phrase or term. Other options include  searching for works containing one of nine types of illustrations, and specifying one of eight languages. The results present users with links to a full citation, an eTable of Contents, and a list of illustrations where applicable. Users may also click on a work retrieved and then browse the whole work one page at a time. All works have been comprehensively indexed with many layers of metadata, thus producing a very valuable tool in searching.

Eighteenth Century Collections Online is now available to onsite users at the Library. At a future date, it is envisaged that access will also be made available to some registered offsite users. Direct access to the collection onsite is via the Indexes and Databases section of the Library’s website at <www.nla.gov.au/pathways/jnls/newsite/view/1263.html>. You can also view the full range of other resources available from the Library’s Indexes and Databases listing at <www.nla.gov.au/pathways/jnls/newsite/>. For those people who would like a bit of help using the collection, training exercises used in tutorials held at the Library are accessible at <www.nla.gov.au/pathways/trainguides.html>. Catalogue records for all the works in the collection are currently being loaded by Kinetica to the National Bibliographic Database and will also be loaded to the National Library’s catalogue. Each catalogue record will include a direct URL link to the full text of that particular work in the Eighteenth Century Collections Online database.

Further information on the collection can be found on the Gale Group’s website at <http://www.gale.com/EighteenthCentury/>. The Library is pleased to be able to provide access to such a valuable resource for researchers. Eighteenth Century Collections Online is a major acquisition and a significant enhancement to our Collection.
— Angela Brown, Manager, Overseas Collection Development

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