News Archive

January 16, 2005

Minutes of the TCP Meetings at the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Boston, MA

The Text Creation Partnership held one meeting on January 16th with representatives from ProQuest, Gale, and Readex. The meeting was very well attended by representatives of current partner institutions, text conversion vendors, and those considering partnership.

The meeting opened with an introduction by Mark Sandler who thanked everyone for coming and talked about the Google digitization project now going forward at Michigan and Michigan's dedication to making digital access available.

Representatives from the three commercial publishers then spoke about their respective databases. Mary Sauer-Games from ProQuest mentioned that TCP texts have been loaded into their database and around 6,000 are currently available. Also, they had an excellent year for sales with consortiums in Canada and the Oberlin group buying EEBO and many of them coming into TCP as well. Remmel Nunn from Readex also talked about sales for the Evans and the Archive Americana project. Rich Foley from Gale then spoke about the ECCO project and a good year for them in sales as well too.

Shawn Martin then gave an update on the TCP projects.

1. It was an excellent year for TCP. Overall, 30 institutions joined the partnership last year. Since ALA Annual, the following institutions joined EEBO-TCP: Albion College, Bates College, Brown University, Bucknell University, Carleton College, Colby College, Earlham College, Mt. Holyoke College, National University of Ireland - Galway, Rollins College, St. Louis University, UC – Berkeley, University of Arizona, University of Arkansas, University of Maryland, University of Mississippi, University of Western Ontario, and Western Michigan University. The following joined Evans-TCP: Johns Hopkins University, Stanford University, University of Connecticut, University of North Carolina – Greensboro, University of Pennsylvania, and the Appalachian College Association (representing over 30 colleges in the Appalachian region).

There are now nearly 8,000 texts available in EEBO-TCP. Around 500 are added bi-monthly, and there has been increased usage over the past year. Evans-TCP is now available to partner institutions at http://ets.umdl.umich.edu/e/evans/. There are around 300 titles currently available and 150 are added bi-monthly. TCP is beginning to start production on ECCO-TCP and we hope to have a demo by summer of 2005.

2. The Board of Directors also met in October of 2004 and discussed among many issues the evolving role of the Board given the addition of two new projects, the project budget, rights of use for publishers and scholarly projects to use TCP texts, a price increase for new partners scheduled to take place in April of 2005, how to include multiple editions of text when asked by scholars, and how to evolve the TCP model to fit larger community goals. The TCP is very grateful for the insights and advice of the Board members who include: Betty G. Bengtson
(Emeritus, University of Washington), David Braden (Readex Digital), Nancy Davenport (Council on Library and Information Resources), Richard Foley (Thomson-Gale), David S. Ferriero (New York Public Library), Marianne Gaunt (Rutgers University),William A. Gosling (Chair, University of Michigan), Deanna B. Marcum (Library of Congress), Sarah C. Michalak
( University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill), William Miller (Florida Atlantic University), Ronald Milne (University of Oxford), Carole Moore (University of Toronto), Mary Sauer-Games (ProQuest Information and Learning), David Stam (Syracuse University), and William D. Walker (University of Miami)

3. In January of 2005 the University of Chicago launched TCP texts into the PhiloLogic database available at http://lib.uchicago.edu/efts/EEBO/. This allows users the ability to gain access to the texts and manipulate it in new ways.

4. The winners of the EEBO in Undergraduate essay contest were

Grand Prize: Heidi Atwood – Washington College
“Thy leaden heels no golden wit doth show:” Physick, Alchemy, and the Body Corporeal in Milton’s Paradise Lost

First Prize: Meghan Fadel – SUNY – Buffalo
Reason through the Unreasonable

Second Prize: Daniel Ward – University of Warwick
Literary Presentation of Political Events in Sir Thomas Durfey’s Sir Barnaby Whigg

Honorable Mention: Bianca Bonomi – University of Warwick
Literary presentation of political/religious events in John Dryden’s Amboyna

Honorable Mention: Charles Mallison – University of Southern California
With High Astounding Terms: Christopher Marlowe, Turkish Hysteria, and Subversion on the Elizabethan Stage.

Thanks also to our judges Katrien Daemen-de Gelder (Professor of English, University of Ghent), Julia Gardner (School of Information, University of Michigan), Arthur Kinney (Professor of English, University of Massachusetts), Hillary Nunn (Professor of English, University of Akron), Newton Key (Professor of English, Eastern Illinois University), and Kim Yates (Assistant Director, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, University of Toronto).

More information is available about the essay contest at http://www.lib.umich.edu/edu_essay.html.

The second half of the meeting was devoted to a roundtable discussion of the TCP in academic research and in teaching. TCP invited the following to give their perspectives on how such resources have been used in their work and how such things could be used as we move into the future:

Steven Bullock – Professor of History, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Ellen Dunlap – Director, American Antiquarian Society
Wayne Franklin – Professor of English, Northeastern University
Brendan Rapple – Collection Development Librarian, Boston College

We are very grateful for their insights and expertise and thankful for their willingness to come to the meeting and share their thoughts.

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