AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY

The American Antiquarian Society (AAS), a learned society and research library founded in 1812, is the third oldest historical organization in the United States and the first to be national rather than regional in its purpose and the scope of its collections. It preserves the largest single collection of printed source material relating to the history, literature, and culture of the first 250 years of what is now the United States, and holds copies of nearly two-thirds of all books, pamphlets, and broadsides known to have been printed in this country between 1640 and 1821. In partnership with Readex (now a division of NewsBank) , AAS produced what has been called one of the most important microform collections ever, a reproduction of the contents of titles listed in the Evans bibliography of American imprints through 1800 . Readex and AAS are now undertaking a massive project to digitize the entire Evans collection, which will include every item previously issued in microform, plus some 1,200 additional works located, catalogued, and digitized since completion of the earlier effort (a total of more than 36,000 works and 2,400,000 images) The University of Michigan, also in cooperation with AAS and Readex, seeks to create enduring digital text editions of the most frequently studied works. These standards-based editions, produced and owned by Text Creation Partnership, will link directly to the corresponding NewsBank/Readex page images and will provide a research and instructional tool of enduring scholarly and instructional value. AAS, drawing on its already significant knowledge of these materials and its contacts with relevant specialists and scholars, will select the titles for the Text Creation Partnership, providing the text collection with the best possible core of significant titles. The Text Creation Partnership greatly values the input of AAS and looks forward to the realization of this valuable resource.