The University of Michigan Library is pleased to announce the completion of the first production phase of the Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership. On Wednesday, September 23, 2009, EEBO-TCP updated the Early English Books Online text collection with its 25, 355th book (view the text collection at http://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/).
Since 1999, the TCP has been forging a groundbreaking collaborative relationship between scholars, commercial publishers, and university libraries to undertake the important work of producing fully-searchable, TEI-compliant SGML/XML enhanced text editions from digital image collections, including ProQuest’s EEBO (as well as Gale’s Eighteenth Century Collections Online and Readex’s Evans Early American Imprint).
Reaching this ambitious goal relied on the tireless effort of many, across a range of fields:
EEBO-TCP partner institutions deserve special gratitude for their trust and support. Ultimately, 148 individual universities and colleges came together to help ensure EEBO-TCP texts were produced efficiently and affordably. In doing so, they distributed much of the financial load for this effort across a community and demonstrated how powerful cooperative agreements can be. Future generations of scholars (at partner institutions and beyond) will benefit greatly from their investment. ProQuest’s diligent and conscientious team was instrumental to TCP’s success, in supplying the book images themselves for conversion but also in recognizing the importance of reliably converted text. In the TCP’s foundational phases and its production routine, The Oxford University Digital Library administration and staff have provided guidance and insight at every turn. Likewise, the Michigan Library administration and staff have been the project’s bedrock in both shaping and carrying out the vision of the TCP. All told, each partnering component of the Text Creation Partnership has proven essential.
Having successfully delivered its 25,000 book, EEBO-TCP is now proceeding with its second phase of production, during which it aims to convert the remaining 44,000 unique monographs in the EEBO image collection. So far, 62 individual universities and colleges have committed to this second production phase. Additionally, a consortial arrangement has been struck with the JISC, which represents most UK institutions of higher learning.
