NCSU Libraries Focus Online

Volume 25 number 1 - Fall 2004

Searching Early English Books Online (EEEO)

By Will Wheeler, Collection Management

This spring the NCSU Libraries acquired an exceptional resource for faculty, students, and other researchers. Early English Books Online (EEBO) is a breakthrough collection of full-text images currently encompassing 105,000 unique titles and 83,000 illustration images that will grow over the next year to 125,000 individual titles.

This collection represents some of the earliest and most valuable print materials of the English language. From the first book printed in English by William Caxton through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare, EEBO includes many of the earliest books across nearly every subject from physics and engineering to literature, history, religion, and politics.

Covering the period roughly from 1475 to 1700, EEBO includes rare bibliographic works previously available only through microform or by traveling to one of the few libraries or museums holding physical copies of these books. For physical scientists and historians of science, the collection includes books in the sciences by Boyle, Newton, and Galileo, as well as popular scientific tracts such as Nicholas Culpeper's The English Physician (1652). Researchers in the humanities will be pleased by the wide array of works in literature and religion such as early editions of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Malory's Morte d'Arthur, the King James translation of the Bible (1611), and the Book of Common Prayer (1549). Students of women's studies will find useful the editions of works by Aphra Behn, Anne Killigrew, and Margaret Cavendish.

Faculty at NC State are already incorporating this valuable new resource into courses, and students can view these rare primary source documents not only on campus but also from off-campus sites. Faculty have expressed their keen interest in these materials for their value to current and future research. Over time, access to this collection will become more valuable as researchers link the present age to its early roots.

Access to this new resource is available through the NCSU Libraries Web site at http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/eresources/databases, where "Early English Books Online" should be selected from the alphabetical listing. Although searching is possible for known items, the sophisticated browse feature allows people to explore by author, title, subject, date, and prior classification. Questions or comments about EEBO should be sent to darby_orcutt@ncsu.edu or william_wheeler@ncsu.edu.