New Product Announcement-->Eighteenth Century Journals II

We now have access to Eighteenth Century Journals II.

From the online introduction to this product:

"The purpose of Eighteenth Century Journals II is to make available digitally for the first time unique or extremely rare eighteenth century periodicals. The primary aim of the project is to promote a truly broad representation of the culture of print journalism in the eighteenth century. Therefore, there was no selection of titles on the basis of subject matter or theme; or by whether a title was well- or lesser known, either by contemporary readers or scholars of today. Instead, the periodicals included in this project have been carefully chosen to convey the eclectism and evolution of the publishing world between 1695 and 1812.

Eighteenth Century Journals II is the continuation of a series which began with the microfilm collection Eighteenth Century Journals, which made available rare periodicals from the Hope Collection at the Bodleian Library. There is no duplication of material from this first microfilm collection: rather, the selections made for the second series deliberately complement and contrast with those of the original project.

Eighteenth Century Journals II is based on the holdings of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas, Austin, which contains one of the finest collections of rare 17th and 18th century British periodicals in the world. The starting point for selection was British Newspapers and Periodicals 1632-1800, a descriptive catalogue of the early periodical holdings at the University of Texas, compiled by Powell Stewart in 1950. The selection process was then widened to include additional titles accessioned after Powell Stewart’s original inventory, and items from the Queen Anne list of serials at the Center.

The titles were then carefully surveyed against Primary Source Media’s microfilm collection Early English Newspapers; Chadwyck-Healey’s Early English Books Online (EEBO); ProQuest's digital collection British Periodicals, and Thomson Gale’s Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), to ensure that there was no duplication whatsoever of material already included in these projects.

The final 70 titles, consisting of 60 journals from the Powell Stewart catalogue, and 10 from the Queen Anne list of serials, were assessed for suitability for digitisation, based on their physical condition. Conservation was carried out wherever possible on fragile items."