The EEBO in Undergraduate Studies Essay Competition honors undergraduate research papers that rely on research conducted via the Early English Books Online collection of primary texts. Essays may reflect the research in diverse academic disciplines - history, literary studies, philosophy, anthropology, religious studies, and more - or they may be interdisciplinary in nature. The chief requirement is that each paper draws substantial evidence from the works included in EEBO.
Entries are evaluated by a Committee of librarians and scholars from around the world representing various disciplines and areas of study. The Committee reads and evaluates each properly submitted essay using the following criteria:
- Quality and creativity of the thesis
- Potential for the essay to contribute to its field and to early modern studies more generally
- Significance of the study for illustrating EEBO's usefulness in undergraduate research
Winning essays in the 2005 EEBO in Undergraduate Studies Essay Competition are outstanding examples of these criteria. “The papers submitted all offered impressive evidence of the exciting uses students can find for primary texts,” said Shawn Martin, EEBO-TCP Project Outreach Librarian, The University of Michigan, “and in many cases they also illustrate the noteworthy contributions that undergraduates can make to the field of early modern studies. We are very glad to have had a role in the work these winners have accomplished, and we are very proud of the scholarship these students have exhibited in their use of texts from EEBO.”
2005 EEBO in Undergraduate Studies Essay Competition Winners:
Further details on the essay contest, along with prior-year recipients, are at http://www.lib.umich.edu/tcp/eebo/edu/edu_essay.html.
About Early English Books Online
EEBO contains page images of 125,000 books listed in the Pollard and Redgrave, Wing, and Thomason Tracts catalogs. With its substantial coverage of printed material found in England between 1473 and 1700, EEBO provides rich research possibilities for students interested in a wide variety of topics in early modern studies. Students access the collection via the Internet at libraries and institutions subscribing to EEBO.
Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership
The Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership (EEBO-TCP) is currently undertaking the task of converting 25,000 works found in EEBO into searchable text. While the University of Michigan University Library, Oxford University, and ProQuest Information and Learning initiated the EEBO-TCP, more than 150 libraries are currently instrumental in making this project possible. The partnership is creating accurate SGML text files and linking them to EEBO page images, thereby allowing users to perform keyword searches as well as see features of the original work. The library partners in the conversion project also act as co-owners of the encoded text files, enjoying full rights of access, adaptation, and distribution.
About ProQuest Information and Learning
ProQuest Information and Learning is a world leader in collecting, organizing, and publishing information for researchers, faculty, and students in libraries and schools. It is widely known for its strength in business and economics, general reference, genealogy, humanities, social sciences, and STM content. The company develops premium databases comprising periodicals, newspapers, dissertations, out-of-print books, and other scholarly information from more than 9,000 publishers worldwide. Users access the information through the ProQuest® Web-based online information system, Chadwyck-HealeyTM electronic and microform resources, UMI® microform and print reference products, eLibrary® and SIRS® educational resources, and Serials Solutions e-resource access and management solutions. ProQuest® Smart Search was named "Best Specialist Search Product" by the International Information Industry Awards in late 2005. For more information about ProQuest Information and Learning, visit www.il.proquest.com.
