ProQuest Makes 7,450 More Early European Books Available With Release of New Collection
From ProQuest:
ProQuest has further enhanced access to research with the launch of the next database of Early European Books (EEB) with Collection 7, making another 7,450 titles available.
This will bring the EEB program to more than 40,000 titles and 14 million pages of valuable images from the early modern period.
The total number of page images in EEB now surpasses the number of page images in ProQuest’s Early English Books Online, EEBO database.
The digitisation of EEB Collection 7 has only been possible through the partnerships with the holding libraries which include the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, in Copenhagen and The Wellcome Libraryin London, bringing over 1.9 million pages to this new collection. ProQuest has scanned the valuable works on site at the libraries using state-of-the-art technology to create high-definition color images of every page, including marginalia inside the pages as well as often-lavish bindings and covers.
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The libraries have provided a breadth of material for Volume 7 of EEB contributing specifically to the following topics:
- History of Medicine and Science- Det Kongelige Bibliotek provides numerous works by Danish physician Thomas Bartholin regarding, for instance his discovery of the thoracic duct and the lymphatic vessels, as well as his 1658 translation of the Venetian nobleman Luigi Cornaro’s book on healthy aging. The Wellcome Library offers William Harvey’s Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus (Frankfurt, 1628), the first edition of his account of his discovery of blood circulation.
- Philosophy, Humanism and The Reformation – Koninklijke Bibliotheek provides the 1674 Amsterdam edition of Spinoza’s Tractatus theologico-politicus, as well as works by Descartes and the influential German mystic Jacob Böhme, by Dutch humanists like Janus Dousa and Erasmus, and by key figures of the Reformation such as Jean Calvin, Theodore Beza and Martin Luther. Det Kongelige Bibliotek offers the first printed edition of the humanist Leon Battista Alberti’s book on architecture (1485).
- Contributions from the Wellcome Library include first editions (in both German and Latin) of Jacob Rueff’s manual of midwifery, 1554, containing the first true anatomical pictures in an obstetrics book
Learn More About EEB
Read the Complete PQ Announcement
On a Related Note…Milestones: UK Medical Heritage Library Digitization Reaches Halfway Point With Over 26,000 Titles, Nearly 8 Million Page Images
Filed under: Digital Preservation, Libraries, News

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.