25,000 early English books go online

The texts of the first printed editions of Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Milton as well as lesser-known titles from the early modern era can now be freely read by anyone with an internet connection. The University of Michigan Library, the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries and ProQuest have made public more than 25,000 manually transcribed texts from the first 200 years of the printed book (1473- 1700). These texts represent a significant portion of the estimated total output of English-language work published during the first two centuries of printing in England.

The release (via Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication) marks the completion of the first phase in the Early English Books Online-Text Creation Partnership (EEBO-TCP). An anticipated 40,000 additional texts are planned for release into the public domain by the end of the decade. Full-text public access to the transcribed EEBO-TCP texts is hosted by the U-M Library at quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebogroup. The Bodleian offers individual text downloads in several formats, including ePUB files.

Highlights include several of William Caxton’s editions of the works of Chaucer, the first translations of Homer by the Elizabethan dramatist and classical scholar George Chapman, and Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica. Possibly of even greater value are the thousands of less famous texts which offer unexplored avenues for discovery. Gardening manuals, cookery books, ballads, auction catalogues, dance instructions, and religious tracts detail the commonplace of the early modern period; books about witchcraft and sword fighting document its more exotic facets.

Many of these works have never before been available to the public online, and physical copies are rare and require special handling. The transcribed texts, as open data, are freely available for anyone to read, reuse, reproduce, repurpose and distribute.

New family history writing course

If you’re at the stage where you’d like to write up your family history research, but aren’t sure how to go about it, an online distance learning course with the University of Exeter could give you the tools you need. ‘Writing Memoir and Family History’ is written and tutored by awardwinning author Cherry Gilchrist, whose books include Growing Your Family Tree and Your Life, Your Story. The course lasts for ten weeks and covers a range of techniques and approaches. The cost is currently £210, and a new run of the course is scheduled for September 2015. For further details, please go to education.exeter.ac.uk/dll/and click the Creative Writing option.

New heritage centre

Swanland is a village situated at the southern end of the Yorkshire Wolds, some seven miles west of Hull. Like many East Riding villages it has a long history and it has now established its own Heritage Centre. The core collection includes maps and a wide variety of documents going back as far as mediaeval times. Full details of its address and opening times are on its website swanlandheritage.info which also holds a collection of over 1500 photos.