Welcome to EEBO Interactions, an experimental forum designed to let users engage collaboratively with the works in ProQuest’s Early English Books Online (EEBO) database.   If you're a researcher, a graduate student, a librarian, or a frequent EEBO user we are interested in having you participate in the EEBO Interactions community.  While we welcome everyone to search and read all of the content in EEBO Interactions, only authenticated EEBO users can register to create a profile, contribute or edit Interactions, or become an editor.
 
Participants can use EEBO Interactions to share their insights or questions about particular works or authors.  Contributions can be as brief as a comment on the date of a work, or as lengthy as an introduction complete with a bibliography and links to other resources.  All contributions will eventually be reviewed by an editor to ensure they are relevant and appropriate and other users may edit or discuss  them.
 
EEBO Interactions is intended to enhance the EEBO experience through scholarly dialogue and comment. Here are a few guidelines to ensure the experience is positive and productive for contributors, editors and readers:
  • Please participate by sharing your knowledge, observations and questions!
  • Please ensure your contributions are relevant to a specific work in EEBO.  Suggestions include:
    • Providing concise and informative commentaries on some of the less frequently discussed texts, as are currently available via the EEBO Introductions Series.
    • Commenting on the bibliographic information in EEBO, such as provenance, dating and authorship.
    • Providing general interpretive notes, or elucidation of textual references and allusions, even translations from or to foreign languages.
    • Referring users to related texts within EEBO.
    • Providing links to other helpful sources and references.
    • Please direct general comments and suggestions for improvement of the Early English Books Online database itself to the EEBO Webmaster
  • Please use appropriate language and be respectful in your replies to other contributors’ Interactions.
  • Please cite information taken from EEBO Interactions in your references as you would any other source, according to the guidelines specified by your style of choice.
  • Tell a friend. If you know of someone who could benefit from EEBO Interactions, please tell them about it. If you are interested in becoming an editor, please contact us. 
  • Give us feedback. If there are ways that we can improve the EEBO Interactions experience please send your thoughts to our EEBO Interactions Webmaster
For more information about Early English Books Online, please visit http://eebo.chadwyck.com. 
 
What is EEBO Interactions?
Early English Books Online™, 1475-1700 (EEBO) provides digital access to more than 125,000 literary and historical classics via subscribing libraries.  Researchers can view images that accurately reflect the way the works appeared in their original printed editions, from such authors as Malory, Spenser, Bacon, More, Erasmus, Boyle, Newton, and Galileo. The database also includes musical exercises by Henry Purcell, novels by Aphra Behn, and prayer books, pamphlets, proclamations, almanacs, calendars, and many other primary resources. 
EEBO Interactions provides a forum for EEBO users to discuss the works and authors found in the database.  Each work and author has an Interactions page which can be edited by registered users.  Each page has sections where users can provide contextual information, ask questions of other users, suggest links to other sources, websites, or scholarly books and papers.   
 
How do I get started?
Anyone with an interest in the print culture of the Early Modern period may search and read the contents of EEBO Interactions.  If you are affiliated with an institution which has access to Early English Books Online you may register to create a profile in EEBO Interactions in order to communicate with your colleagues via email or create or edit contributions.  You may need to go through your normal library authentication process and access EEBO first, then link to Interactions from the EEBO homepage in order to ensure that links between the two sites work seamlessly.
Once you are registered, you can access the content in EEBO Interactions in various ways:
  • Browse the Recent Contributions from the Interactions homepage
  • Use the EEBO Interactions search function to find Interactions pages for all of the Works and Authors which match your interests. 
  • Link directly to EEBO Interactions from EEBO records. Simply click the interaction-no icon icon to link from EEBO to the corresponding EEBO Interaction. A blank interaction-no icon icon means no one has contributed to that Interaction page yet, while a shaded interaction-yes icon icon means there is information available to be read. 
When you open an Interactions page for an work or author of interest, a bibliographic record will be available followed by sections with headings like “About this work” or “Suggested reading.”  Click the edit tab icon tab to start writing about this work or author.  If you care to discuss what has been written on the page, click the discuss tab icon tab.  Clicking either tab will open an edit screen which clearly guides you through the options available for creating or editing a contribution.  Click the save button icon button when you are finished to post your contribution! At this point it may be read, discussed or edited by other users. An editor will eventually review your contribution and it will be accepted as posted, edited, or rejected if inappropriate (please refer to the Guidelines for information on inappropriate usage).
 
These are the basics. More detailed information is available under Help.  We hope you will start sharing your knowledge and questions soon! 
 
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