Eight Centuries Content
Eight Centuries is a vast scholarly database for finding published material, with the scope of the bulk of searchable material extending from the 12th century through 1960. Some records from before and after these dates do exist, depending on the particular source being searched.
Through enhancement and implementation of dozens of historically significant scholarly indexes, it offers multidisciplinary coverage of primary materials in the Humanities, Social Sciences, Engineering, History of Science, Law, Economics, Religion, Psychology, Government Documents, Visual Arts, Music, and the Physical Sciences.
Our objective is not simply to convert data, but to improve it.
This includes expanding truncated or erroneous titles, adding date elements, creating subject access, and expanding both direct and OpenURL links.
The example here is from William Frederick Poole's Index to Periodical Literature, 1800-1900:
Title Reconciliation
Paratext editors correct titles and expand them wherever possible. Original materials often contained erroneous abbreviated title data, or outright omissions. Title reconciliation improves accuracy for both searching and archive management.
Added Publication Dates
The addition of dates to Poole's Index is a major contribution: the original index had no date information. In addition to improved searching, the inclusion of dates dramatically improves the accuracy of both direct and OpenURL links to full text repositories.
Direct Links
We continues to enrich our data with OA content available from sources like HathiTrust or the Library of Congress. This marries the richest indexing service to granular OA targets, often with better results than those available from the repository's own search algorithms.
OpenURL Links
Libraries with well-supported knowledgebases can increase its usefulness for direct research, interlibrary loan, and other applications.
Index to Periodical Literature, 1800-1900 (Poole's)
| 001 | _ _ | 00006635 |
| 245 | a | Beer, Antiquity of |
| 514 | a | Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge |
| c | 1 (1832):3 | |
| 589 | a | Poole's Index to Periodical Literature, 1802-1906 |
| 856 | o | h |
| U | http://hdl.handle.net/2027/inu.30000093220105?urlappend=%3Bnum=3%3Bu=1 | |
| 856 | o | o |
| u | ?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fparatext.com&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffm%3Akev% ... |
Open Access and Full-Text Links
Open Access, full-text material is constantly expanding in Eight Centuries.
New contributions from the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) and the National Archives have brought the vast majority of citations available for open access to these full-text materials.
Eight Centuries also incorporates links to content digitized by HathiTrust—and, in doing so, 8C builds on the indexing of HathiTrust in a number of crucial ways. First and foremost, HathiTrust may store the data, but interpretation of the data is left entirely to the user. 8C helps with the researcher considerably by placing scanned material in a wider context alongside other sources.
Furthermore, 8C can create conceptual links between different pieces of source material stored in HathiTrust, leading researchers to form connections that may elude someone accessing the same piece of material in HathiTrust alone.
In many cases, the HathiTrust links in our records represent entirely original editorial work on the part of Paratext. The process of adding links was the largest data conversions projects we did for 8C (thus far, at least) with over 2 million citations to HathiTrust material generated.
In addition, a variety of editorial enhancements were made to 8C records during this process: metadata corrections to dates, titles, and names, as well as—perhaps the most challenging—reconciling journal names. After all, HathiTrust was established to digitally archive content rather than correct records, so Paratext has stepped into the former role through countless hours of human editorial work.
Eight Centuries integrates with millions of full-fext documents in the following repositories.
Open Access
Commercial Data Sources
Never Miss a Source...
Eight Centuries brings you sources you never even knew existed. Whether your focus is in the Arts, History of Science, or Engineering—Eight Centuries has aggregated all relevant and esoteric materials from 1106 to 1930 all under one search.
Advanced students, graduate and post-doctoral researchers can pinpoint what they need in a single source.
Open Access
Open Access, full-text material is constantly expanding in Eight Centuries.
New contributions from the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) and the National Archives have brought the vast majority of citations available for open access to these full-text materials.
Readex, Adam Matthew, ArtStor, JSTOR, HathiTrust, and Library of Congress.