Category: E-resource review

Pearson, David. Book Owners Online.

Posted on by Ron McColl

Book Owners Online (BOO) is the work of the distinguished book historian David Pearson and a technical team that have helped translate his long-respected bibliography “English Book Owners in the Seventeenth Century” into a digital platform. The growing database contains entries for just over 1,800 17th and 18th century British book owners.

Michelle Levy et al., The Women’s Print History Project

Posted on by Leah Orr

The Women’s Print History Project is a database that collects in one place information about British women’s writing, editing, publishing, printing, bookselling, and other contributions to the print trade in the “long eighteenth century” (in this case, 1750-1830). Built by a team of more than twenty people under the leadership of Michelle Levy and Kandice Sharren and funded by an SSHRC Insight Grant and Simon Fraser University, the database pulls together extensive bibliographical information from print, online, and developing sources. It is thus a much-needed centralized search for a territory that has been enriched in recent years by specialized projects covering different aspects of this historical archive.

Soledad Acosta de Samper Digital Library. University of Los Andes: 2019.

Posted on by Georgina Wilson Aranguren

Coordinated by Dr. Carolina Alzate, in association with the University of Los Andes and the National Library of Colombia, the Soledad Acosta de Samper Digital Library (Biblioteca Digital Soledad Acosta de Samper, in Spanish) is a Spanish-language project that seeks to provide open access to the complete works of Colombian author Soledad Acosta de Samper (1833-1913). Now recognized as one of that nation’s most important authors, Acosta de Samper was all but forgotten until Hispanic female scholars such as Monserrat Ordóñez awakened a renewed interest in her writings during the 1980s. Thanks to these efforts, Acosta de Samper is now appreciated for her remarkable literary prolificacy and ardent advocacy of women’s education and equal rights during a time when women were typically relegated to a supporting role in Colombian society. The author’s works were digitized in 2013 as part of the Colombian Ministry of Culture’s “Year of Soledad Acosta de Samper” celebrations, and the Soledad Acosta de Samper Digital Library organizes those products of her rich intellectual life into an easy-to-navigate website.