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What is EEBO Interactions?

EEBO Interactions is a social network for Early English Books Online (EEBO) that allows its registered users to
  • comment upon works and authors in EEBO
  • debate issues connected with early printed books
  • correct and improve existing attribution and dating information
  • highlight and review new scholarship
  • ask teaching and research questions
  • share knowledge
  • analyze texts
  • link to related resources on the web and
  • interact with other EEBO users around the world

Registration

While everyone is welcome to search and read all of the content in EEBO Interactions, only registered EEBO Interactions users can contribute to the site.  Automatic registration for EEBO Interactions is open to EEBO users.

Users who have not yet registered must visit the EEBO homepage in order to gain access the EEBO Interactions Registration form.  Please go to the EEBO homepage (entering your authentication details if necessary) and then click the link to register as a new user on the right-hand side of the screen (in the red box on the screenshot below) to return to the EEBO Interactions Registration form. 
 
EEBO home page image
 
If EEBO Interactions recognises you as an authenticated EEBO user you will be taken to the Registration form when you click this link on the EEBO home page (or when you click the Register link in the EEBO Interactions toolbar).
 
EEBO uses cookie technology to provide its authorized users with access to the EEBO Interactions online registration mechanism. The cookie stores encrypted information verifying your access to the system.  Allowing EEBO to ‘drop’ a cookie does not mean that ProQuest LLC has access to any other parts of your computer or network, nor can other web sites read that cookie. If you share a machine, other users cannot discover details about you by looking at the ProQuest LLC cookie file.
 
If you experience difficulties accessing the Registration form please submit your registration details using our Registration request form.  Please note that there may be some delay before your request receives a response and that ProQuest reserves the right to decline registration requests.
 
 

Searching

Users can search the contents of EEBO Interactions either by using the basic one-box search (which appears in the banner on each page of the site) or by using the multi-field Advanced Search screen (available by clicking the Advanced link that appears to the right of the one-box search).
 
Both of these search interfaces allow the user to retrieve Interactions by matching particular words or phrases in contributions by users and/or in bibliographic information drawn from EEBO.  There are some differences in behavior between the two searches and some differences between the behavior of searches in EEBO Interactions and the behavior of searches in EEBO.
 

One-box Search

The one-box search appears on every page in EEBO Interactions and allows the user to query contributions by users and/or bibliographic information drawn from EEBO.
 
The one-box search only looks for instances of whole words that match your search term, e.g. Search for: smith will retrieve instances of smith or Smith (but will not retrieve Interactions that only contain smith as part of another word such as Smithfield, Blacksmith, Goldsmith, goldsmiths etc.).  In this respect the behavior of the one-box search is unlike that of the Advanced Search, which looks both for instances of whole words and parts of words that match your search term (see below).
 
As with the Advanced Search, double quotation marks can be used to retrieve instances of a particular phrase, e.g. Search for: "Little Britain" will retrieve instances of the phrase Little Britain (and will exclude Interactions where the words little and Britain only appear separately).
 
Search expressions containing multiple terms will retrieve Interactions that contain one or more instances of each of the terms entered, whether they appear separately or together, e.g. Search for: East India Company (without quotes) will retrieve interactions containing instances of east, India and company, regardless of whether or not these terms appear in the sequence entered by the user.
 
An upper-case OR can be entered between search terms to perform broad searches for Interactions that contain one or more of the user’s search terms, e.g. Search for: Utopia OR Vtopia will retrieve Interactions that contain either Utopia or Vtopia.
 
The Search Results display for the one-box search includes a context of matches display showing the first match for your search term in its context.
 

Advanced Search

The Advanced Search interface allows users to query particular fields in the EEBO bibliographic metadata.  It also allows users to restrict searches to Author Interactions or Work Interactions.
 
The Advanced Search looks both for instances of whole words and parts of words that match your search term, e.g. KEYWORD(S): smith will retrieve instances of smith, Smith, Smithfield, Blacksmith, Goldsmith, goldsmiths etc. In this respect the behavior of the Advanced Search interface differs from that of the one-box search, which only looks for instances of whole words that match your search term (see above).
 
Double quotation marks can be used to retrieve instances of a particular phrase, e.g. KEYWORD(S): "Little Britain" will retrieve instances of the phrase Little Britain (and will exclude Interactions where the words little and Britain only appear separately).
 
Search expressions containing multiple terms will retrieve Interactions that contain one or more instances of each of the terms entered whether separately or together, e.g. SUBJECT KEYWORD(s): Treason Charles will retrieve interactions containing instances of both treason and Charles in the Subject field.  
 
The words and, or, and not are not treated as Boolean operators by the EEBO Interactions Advanced Search.
 
Only the AUTHOR KEYWORD(S) field should be used in combination with the LIMIT TO: Author Interactions option.  Searches with terms entered in fields other than AUTHOR KEYWORD(S) such as TITLE KEYWORD(S) or IMPRINT will retrieve no matches when combined with the LIMIT TO: Author Interactions option.
 

Browsing Contributions

As an alternative to searching for Interactions, click the Contributors link in the top toolbar to see a list of contributors to the site.  A list of all the Interactions with contributions by a particular user can be accessed by clicking the link that appears to the right of the contributors name (e.g. View 7 interactions).
 

Contributing to an Interaction

In order to contribute content to EEBO Interactions, users must be registered and logged in.
 
If you visit a Work-level interaction or Author interaction display after logging in you should see a row of tabs towards the top of the Interaction screen including options labelled View, Discuss and Edit.
 
Use the Edit screen to contribute content to this interaction page or to edit existing submissions by other users.
 
This Discuss area provides contributors with a forum for discussing possible improvements to the content of the main Interaction page.  The Discuss area is not the page to use to submit content to the interactions page: comments posted on the Discuss area are not visible as part of the main Interactions display and are not surfaced as Interactions on the EEBO Interactions home page.

Messaging

Registered users of EEBO Interactions can use messaging software to contact other users of the site. After logging in to EEBO Interactions, users will see two links (Write new message and Messages) in the yellow fin on the right-hand side of the screen, just under the black navigation bar that forms part of the site banner.

There are various different ways to send a message to another user of EEBO Interactions.

  1. Visit the Contributors display (by clicking the Contributors link in the black navigation bar at the top of each page), click on the user’s name and, on the page that opens, scroll down to the Send this user a message link at the bottom.
  2. Visit the Contributors display (by clicking the Contributors link in the black navigation bar at the top of each page), click on the user’s name and, on the page that opens, click the yellow Contact tab.
  3. Click the Write new message link in the yellow fin under the banner and enter the user’s EEBO Interactions Username in the ‘To:’ field.

The EEBO Interactions messaging functionality allows users to contact multiple other users of the service with a single email. Insert a comma between each Username in the ‘To:’ field on the Write new message display.

Users receive notifications from EEBO Interactions each time a message arrives in their EEBO Interactions Inbox (although please note it is possible for users to deactivate this alerting mechanism). Users are also alerted to the presence of unread emails in their EEBO Interactions Inbox each time they log in to the service.

To access your EEBO Interactions Inbox, click the Messages link that appears in the yellow fin under the banner after logging in.

Users of EEBO Interactions are required to enter a valid email address when registering as a user of the site. This email address is not made visible except to privileged users of the site (such as site administrators and editors), and will only be used if the user wishes to receive a new password or other notifications by email.

Further Information

Read our Privacy policy, Guidelines and Terms of service.  If you experience problems registering, please contact us.