University of Pennsylvania: “Early Novels Database Makes 400-Year-Old Books Searchable”
Early Novels Database is a bibliographic database that consists of American and British fiction novels from the years 1660-1830, and it is revolutionizing humanities research.
While the collection of over 3,000 physical books will be searchable online, the texts will not be digitalized. Rather, END will focus on making metadata searchable.
“We view ourselves as a second generation metadata driven digital humanities project,” END faculty director Rachel Buurma said.
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Lynne Farrington, the curator of Printed Books at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Van Pelt, defined metadata as “information about the work.” The “work” END focuses on is paratext, which includes titles, the claimed gender of the author, prefaces, title pages and circulating library lists of borrowers. The database draws this information from specific physical copies of these novels.
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About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.
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