Product Reviews/Testimonials

19th Century U.S. Newspapers
"The 19th century United States newspapers database contains digital facsimile images of both full pages and clipped articles from hundreds of newspapers drawn from over 20 microfilm collections across the United States. Searching uses the Infotrac system and will be familiar to users of the The Times Digital Archive."
— Lawbook Co., 2007

"The John Rylands University Library at The University of Manchester has recently taken out a subscription to the [Cengage] Learning database Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers
Online. The subscription was initiated in January of this year and the database has already proved popular with academic staff and students in the University’s School of English and American Studies.

An extensive range of full-text newspapers is included in the database. One of the main intentions of the development team was to include as wide a representation of newspapers as possible. Hence the database includes not only mainstream publications, such as the
New York Herald, but also full text articles from a variety of fairly obscure nineteenth century newspapers. For example, the database includes such rarities as the Nauvoo Expositor (1844) which only produced one single issue before it was closed down and had its printing press destroyed. It includes newspapers produced by the black press of the antebellum period and the post-civil war eras. Some Native American newspapers are included, for example the Cherokee Phoenix. First published in 1828, the Phoenix was the first American Indian Newspaper to be published. A handful of newspapers from the former US territories are included: for example, it is possible to access some nineteenth century newspapers which were produced and circulated in Alaska, which was, during this period, classified as an ‘unorganized territory’.

Some of the newsprint, particularly from the earlier newspapers, has inevitably faded quite dramatically (the digital images have been taken from microfilm) and, in some cases, the digitized images can be difficult to read. However, a useful magnification tool is provided
which allows the size of the newsprint to be increased up to 6400%. The functionality of the database includes search term highlighting and an opportunity to limit searches to selected sections of the various newspapers. For example, it is possible to do searches on various subjects within Classified Advertisements. The database also features ‘infomarks’, which provide a way of saving your chosen article with a persistent URL. In addition to these features, the database also provides access to some recent essays by historians of journalism which provide a background context to the newspapers included, and reference
articles on key events and issues in nineteenth-century American history, for example the Civil War and Slavery. Having spoken to some members of academic staff in the School of
English and American Studies, it is becoming increasingly evident that the database is proving to be a very useful research tool. It has the capacity to provide access to a myriad of articles and ephemera which would have previously been very labour-intensive and difficult
to find. One of our academics has welcomed the opportunity to narrow down searches to particular sections of newspapers, such as advertisements, letters to the editor and so on. Broad studies and comparisons of a huge range of topics can now be made. It offers the
opportunity, for example, to make comparisons between the content, style and attitudes of newspapers which served agrarian communities and those which were produced for an urban readership. On reflection, it is clear that the database, if used imaginatively and with
some attention to detail, provides the capacity to open up a great amount of potential for future research on a huge range of subjects."
— Rose Goodier, John Rylands University Library

Conditions and Politics in Occupied Europe
"Searches can be limited to specific countries or to certain broad subjects (eg Co-ordination, Refugees). Fuzzy search is available and search histories are displayed. Advanced search allows you to limit keywords to certain fields, allowing a much more targeted search for, say, New Zealand. In 'Browse Indexes' you can select search terms from six tabs: Persons; Senior Officials; Organisations; Document Type; Language; and File Number. This database also has four introductory essays, a film from the Imperial War Museum London on the work of the SOE (Special Operations Executive) including training of the agents 'Felix' and 'Kat', a chronology, and links to related archive resources."
— Lawbook Co., 2007

Declassified Documents Reference System
"The site is easy to navigate...This resource is an important reference tool that contains an extensive amount of original documents. It is highly recommended for all academic libraries that support disciplines such as International Relations, Political Science, History, and Economics."
— Reference Reviews (May 2001)

Eighteenth Century Collections Online
"Today eighteenth century scholars have many print and electronic archives at their disposal, But ECCO is unquestionably the best. Compiled by the best research universities in North America and Britain, ECCO offers the largest archive of its kind, boasting more than a hundred thousand fully text searchable texts.

In this vast collection, scholars can research both ideas and images, getting an intimate look at eighteenth century Britain and the Americas. For instance, in an undergraduate or graduate class, students could examine Samuel Johnson's renowned pamphlet, The False Alarm, that attempted to defuse the volatile Wilkite crisis of the late 1760s and early 1770s, brought about by the expulsion of John Wilkes from parliament (Wilkes libeled King George III and wrote the bawdy An Essay on Woman, a parody of Alexander Pope's An Essay on Man). Then the class could examine numerous illustrations of Wilkes, such as famous images of him entitled "Wilkes and liberty."

Whatever interests scholars and students bring to ECCO, they will find this huge electronic archive, with its sophisticated search engines, motivates new knowledge. Researchers following up footnotes to contemporary scholarship in print will find that new worlds of teaching and scholarship are opened up. Imagine being able to show students the complexities of Pope's The Dunciad, in its many editions, as well as the controversial responses to this text. Anthologized texts taught in the classroom, accompanied by ECCO, take on a hypertext quality, nearly impossible to find in ordinary anthologies sold by publishers. In short, with ECCO, the print world and the electronic world find a symbiotic relationship, yielding endless possibilities for teaching and scholarship."
— Dr. Mark A. Pedreira, University of Puerto Rico, March 2006

"...breadth of coverage and great utility for specialized research on many subjects. Recommended." — Choice, April 2005

"The ECCO interface is certainly not an 18th Century Artifact. Thomson Gale has used clean simple design that ensures that the scanned image a user is researching is placed at the center of the screen. The top of the screen features the essential data of author, title name, publisher, year of publication, the scan's page number and which index the page is from.

If your user base needs regular access to original 18th Century works this is the most comprehensive database available. With Athens authentication, this vast 18th Century library is sure to become a more embedded component of 21st Century research."
— Information World Review, February 2005

"ECCO provides excellent access to a broad range of materials in a wide array of disciplines, covering an important era in world history"
— Reference Reviews, August 2004

"ECCO provides excellent access to a broad range of materials in a wide array of disciplines, covering an important era of world history."
— Reference Review (August 2004)

"This system performs well; you can literally browse by alphabet or type in the beginning of a name or title to pull up a suggested list.

The online Search Tips section is nothing short of superb. Best of all, it is constantly available at the top of every screen.

THE BOTTOM LINE: The content, scope, accessibility of Eighteenth Century Collections Online are astonishing. Enthusiastically recommended for all academic, public, a research libraries serving serious literary scholarship."
— Database and Disc Reviews, May 2004

"...ECCO's most salient feature is that it is fully searchable, and that it offers various means of broadening or narrowing searches, of which level-of-fuzziness is most notable...as I have come to realize, that many LiOn searches fail to turn up words that are in fact present in texts that are in its database. Because ECCO uses microfilms rather than transcriptions, it has largely overcome this very serious problem...More scholars, it seems to me, will be seeking to investigate a topic in depth, within a period rather than across periods, and for this ECCO is invaluable...ECCO appears to be greatly superior to any searchable, electronic rival known to me...But I am confident that for more advanced research of various kinds, ECCO will be welcomed at once, widely and warmly, and that as its database expands and more and more scholars become aware of what can be done with it, it will establish itself as an indispensable tool...My best wishes to you--and for the success of this admirable project."
— Professor George Starr (UCSB) (April 2004)

"This database will be extremely useful in college and university libraries. Many of these writing are not made available to the public due to their scarcity and their delicate conditions. This database makes the literature of the eighteenth century available to students and scholars alike."
— ARBA (2004)

The Making of the Modern World: The Goldsmiths’-Kress Library of Economic Literature "This is a highly usable, content-rich resource. Summing Up: Highly recommended."
— Choice, March 2006

The Middle East Online: Series 1: Arab-Israeli Relations 1917-1970
"The Middle East Online series provides facsimile copies of primary source documents (letters, minutes, reports, maps) from the National Archives, London. Series 1 covers the Arab-Israeli conflict and Palestine from the 1917 Balfour Declaration through to the Black September war of 1970-1971. Many of the comments are pertinent to the issues in the modern Middle East; others are quite blunt or descriptive and convey the hopes and frustrations felt by diplomats at the time. Searches can be limited to documents from specific government departments, including the War Office and the Foreign Office. Advanced search also allows searches to be limited to specific fields (eg Author, Language, Subject) and by date range."
— Lawbook Co., 2007

The Middle East Online: Series 2: Iraq 1914-1974
"The browse indexes in Series 2 include tabs for persons, organisations, language, document types (eg cartoons) and TNA File Numbers. This database also includes five introductory essays, including ones on the British Mandate and the Iraqi Communist Party; multimedia - three film clips; links to six association websites; and a timeline."
— Lawbook Co., 2007

Sabin Americana, 1500-1926
"Sabin Americana is a collection of 29,000 digitised books, pamphlets, serials and other documents that provide original accounts of exploration, trade, colonialism and more, published from 1500 to the early 1900s...the page number and image number of hits within the work are shown, making it easy to select a link direct to the relevant pages. It is not possible to search within a page in the browser, but the search words are highlighted."
— Lawbook Co., 2007

"The images are superb, and can be resized or reformatted for reading. Users can e-mail and print a maximum of 50 pages at a time. Summing Up: Recommended."
— Choice Special Issue, August 2006

"The images are superb, and can be resized or reformatted for reading. Users can e-mail links and print a maximum of 50 pages at a time. Most likely to acquire this resource are large university libraries; four-year colleges and consortia should acquire it for the benefit of upper-level history students. Summing Up: Recommended."
— Choice, July 2006

Slavery and Anti-Slavery (SAS): A Transnational Archive
"..represents a consummate resource." "Undergraduates and neophyte researchers will find the chronology and topic essays very useful--they do a fantastic job of contextualizing slavery and the anti-slavery movement." "...database is an unparalleled resource." "Simply put, nothing comparable to SAS (and the proposed future iterations) exists. This project is unequivocally the most important undertaking related to the study of slavery since Eugene Genovese's epochal Roll, Jordan, Roll (CH, Nov'75)."
— Choice, December 2009

Times Digital Archive, 1785-1985
"The Times Digital Archive comprises searchable images of every page of every issue of The Times ( London) from 1785 to 1985, making it a terrific source of information about 19- and 20th-century history."
— Lawbook Co., 2007

"...sophisticated search interface and features makes "The Times Digital Archive as asset in public and academic institutions and for anyone from scholars to history enthusiasts."
— Netconnect, Fall 2005

"The full research potential of The Times is being unlocked, or perhaps unleashed...Gale is scanning all the issues published between 1785 and 1985 — nearly a million pages and some ten million articles — to create The Times Digital Archive. To that is added technology that can read the original and sometimes erratic typesetting and locate words or phrases across the centuries."
— The Times (May 2003)

"Hot off the online presses. The back files of The Times of London have been digitized and made searchable via the familiar Info-Trac interface. Times Digital Archives takes full-text online newspapers to the next step, with page images of the entire newspaper, articles, advertisements, book reviews, and more."
— Library Journal (April 2003)

"We called this 'a dream of a database,' a full-text archive providing access not only to articles from the Times but also to advertising and classified ads, editorials, birth and death notices, book reviews, crossword puzzles, letters to the editor, and the Court Page, which details the activities of the royals."
— Booklist (January 2003)

"This is a sophisticated database, requiring some patience and skill to use. The finished archive will have enormous potential as a research tool and suit the needs of large public and academic libraries as well as historians, journalists, and educators...valuable content."
— Booklist (November 2002)

"Over the next 18 to 20 months, Gale is posting a dream of a database, the London Times from 1785 to 1985. This is the full-text archive, including not only newspaper articles but also advertising and classified ads, editorials, birth and death notices, book reviews, crossword puzzles, letters to the editor, and the Court Page, which details the activities of the royals...This is a sophisticated database, requiring some patience and skill to use. The finished archive will have enormous potential as a research tool and suit the needs of large public and academic libraries as well as historians, journalists and educators. The major drawback is slow loading, but this can be forgiven when the user is rewarded by such valuable content."
— Booklist (September, 2002)

"The ( London) Times Digital Archives, 1785-1985, is hot off the online presses. The back files of The Times, a huge microfilm collection from Gale's Primary Source Microfilm, have been digitized and made searchable via the familiar InfoTrac interface...A fascinating and valuable primary source tool for history, social science research, arts, and humanities courses. I'm eagerly looking forward to seeing (and using) the complete archives in 2003. Recommended for school, public, academic, and special libraries both for its content and the intuitive InfoTrac interface."
—Library Journal (September 2002)

Women, War and Society 1914-1918

"Recently published is Women, War & Society 1914-1918, an online publication of the Women’s Work Collection from the Imperial War Museum. This collection was begun in 1917 to illustrate the extend to which women were involved in the war effort when millions in all participant nations took on a diverse range of roles and occupations. The documents -
reports, pamphlets photographs and press cuttings - also supply important evidence
for the plight of the Belgian nation and its refugees. The section heading ’Belgium’ contains 1869 folders, whereas a general search on ’Belgium’ yields 2911 files, and ’Belgian’, 3355 files. These includes items such as ’The Destruction of Belgium. Germany’s Confession
and Avoidance’ (1916); ’The Belgian Refugees in Holland’ (1914); and ’Some
Personal Experiences and Accounts of Individual Belgian Refugees’ by Edith Lyttleton."
— Belguim Events (February 2006)

"The Women's Work Collection was first compiled by the Women's Work Subcommittee that was set up in April 1917 as part of the new Imperial War Museum. The main objective of this committee was to provide a thorough record of women's activities during the war. Early efforts, despite being plagued by patronising and/or indifferent attitudes of various cultural authorities, resulted in an influx of both personal and official information. there were reports from societies and organizations (for example the British Red Cross, the National Union of Women's Suffrage), government pamphlets, press cuttings, as well as personal letters and accounts of all kinds of experiences from factory workers to female doctors and nurses working in Serbia and Belgium. These contain information about the daily lives of all sorts of women, as well as their perceptions of the work they did and the repercussions it could have. In 1918, the committee commissioned the first British woman war artist (Victoria Monkhouse) to create paintings of women doing traditionally male jobs. This collection, invaluable to both war historians and those studying gender issues, has now been digitised in collaboration with [Gale] that has improved access and methods of searching the available documents.

The database, now titled Women, War and Society, 1914-1918 is introduced with a useful page containing information on the nature and purpose of the collection, as well as an essay by each of the contributing editors on a certain aspect of women's work and gender roles during this period. In particular, an essay from Susan Grayzel, which looks at the purpose of the collection, and from Mary Wilkinson, which looks in detail at the development of, and changing attitudes to the collection, give contextual information. The essays that look at subjects such as suffrage and political activity, and patriotism, also contain links to relevant documents in the collection, so that the user may view the evidence alongside the article.

The database itself has a fairly comprehensive search facility with three methods of searching the collection. The basic search gives a keyword box for simple one or two word enquiries, or, if preferred, a list of searchable headings such as Armenia or education. The advanced search gives the option of multiple keyword searching as well as the list of headings; the search facility here is augmented by the fuzzy search option with low, medium or high settings. The third search method is the browse screen which contains a long list of organizations and institutions, such as the Air Pillow Fund, set up to send air pillows and other linen to the front, or the politico-Conservative Primrose League, of which the user may choose up to 20 at a time.

The results themselves are displayed in lists with clickable titles taking the user to the digitised document. The user can browse each document either "turning pages" using the next page and previous page browse buttons to the left of the item, or by selecting a particular page to look at. Users are also able to use the tools on the document pages to enlarge and/or decrease the size of the item being studied.

The toolbar at the top of the screen offers more options. Users can print or e-mail documents to an address of choice. To mark items of interest, it is only necessary to check the box next to the title and it will automatically be added to a marked list that is accessible from the marked items link in the toolbar. There is also a useful section on search tips that goes through truncation, combining searches and Boolean language. If the previous searches heading is chosen from the toolbar, users are able to access and combine previous search statements in order to further focus results.

As well as the collection itself, there is also a resources section containing four information sheets from the Imperial War Museum on four important women's organizations: The Women's Royal Naval Service, Queen Mary's Army Auxiliary Corps, Voluntary Aid Detachments and Members of the Women's Work Subcommittee. Each sheet contains service records, casualty records and medical records, as well as corps collections, other institutions of interest and further reading. Links to any relevant documentation contained in the database itself are provided. The resources page also contains six reproductions or recruitment posters and paintings representing the role of women during the war.

Women, War and Society is a fascinating historical resource in its own right: during my searches I found a variety of interesting items, from a menu book for "meatless days" in wartime households, to annual reports from women's leagues, some letters from the committee asking for donations, and a cautionary tale about the perils of unmarried motherhood. The digitisation of this collection will improve accessibility, and give the student or historian the ability to search and cross-reference documents with greater ease. Not only will this collection be more easily available for education and research, there will be less need to handle the documents themselves, ensuring the preservation of this unique collection."

— Sonya Lipczynska
User Education Librarian, Kings College London
Institute of Psychiatry, London, UK