Collections 1 – 4 of Early European Books Online, to which we recently gained access at http://eeb.chadwyck.co.uk, are a superb resource for many researchers. They contain scanned images of over 20,000 books printed before 1700 from several major European libraries (the National Central Library of Florence, the National Library of the Netherlands, the Royal Library in Copenhagen, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and the Wellcome Library in London which is strong in the history of science). Every page in each book has been scanned to a high quality from the original volumes rather than from microfilm. The specialist search options are impressive. Each individual book in Collections 1 – 4 has a record in iFind Discover the library catalogue, with a direct link to each book.
Most of the books in Early European Books Online are in European languages other than English. It thus complements Early English Books Online (EEBO) which includes 125,000 books published in English up to 1700 and is available to us within the Historical Texts website. Historical Texts contains EEBO, Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) and 65,000 19th century books digitised from the British Library’s collections. Historical Texts, launched this year, replaced JISC Historic Books whose interface had been widely criticised. There are links to Historical Texts in iFind Research and iFind Research.
Both Early European Books Online and Historical Texts can suggest many possibilities for research. Further developments are planned in both sites.