On Sat, 15 Apr 2006 18:29:57 +0100, Ruth <historyscape@gmail.com> wrote: >I haven't noticed anyone mentioning the current free access to the >Gale Group's databases which is running throughout April. Have a look >at: >http://trials.galegroup.com/nlw2006/portal.html > >I can particularly recommend the Eighteenth Century Collections >database (under History, Biography and Literature) I can also recommend: The Making of the Modern Economy --------------------------------------------------- "The Making of the Modern Economy: Goldsmiths'-Kress Library of Economic Literature 1450-1850" provides digital facsimile images on every page of 61,000 works of literature on economic and business published from 1450 through 1850. Full-text searching on more than 12 million pages provides researchers unparalleled access to this vast collection of material on commerce, finance, social conditions, politics, trade and transport. They have taken copies of books from London University's Goldsmiths' Library and Harvard University's Kress Library, and cover the periods prior to the 18th century plus the first half of the19th century which the 'Eighteenth Century Collections' obviously does not cover. As Ruth has indicated there are some amazing resources hidden in these databases. I would add to her list: Law Lists and Commercial Directories. We have been using these resources for months and have saved hundreds of items, ranging in size from single book pages (together with the corresponding title page), through small pamphlets, complete book chapters and even complete books of several hundred pages. Here are some tips for those not familiar with the Gale Group of online databases: - Select 'Full Text' from the drop down list for 'Search Type', or else you will be searching only from the bibliographic details of the books (title, author, subject, etc). For the 'Times Digital Archive' default search option select: 'Search for words in entire article content' - select the 'Advanced Search' option if you want to be more selective. This is particularly useful for the Times Digital Archive when you have a common name, as you can then select the 'People' section or even a People sub-section such as 'Marriages' - if a surname you wish to search is too common so that you need to use a forename as well, just enter both words together. The search mechanism will find them if adjacent (or even if only within a few characters of each other in the Times search) in the original text. However because of errors in the Optical Character Reading (OCR) some such text pairs will be missed. For the same reason stringing more than two words together in a search string leads to diminishing returns! - If you want to save and/or print pages from a book make sure you select the highest value from the 'Scale' drop down list - the latter only appears once you have a facsimile page on screen. The highest scale value is usually 100 per cent (400 per cent for the Times Digital Archive) - to save a facsimile page right click on its image on the screen (do NOT try and save the whole web page) and select 'Save Picture As' option from the pop up menu. With Windows XP you can also just click on the floppy disk icon that should pop up when you hover your cursor over the facsimile page picture. Be careful when saving the Times. Generally select 'Article' rather than 'Page' from the results list. (If you save a full Times page it is just readable if printed out on an A3 printer . . . ) When saving an article be sure that you get the correct part of the page, as some articles have been scanned in separate sections, but appear together on screen - so hover cursor over the column containing what you want to save and right click, etc. There is a problem that the Times Reference appears towards the top left of the screen and the part of the page you are interested in may appear well away from this area - I take notes before combining the reference with a short description of the subject of interest into the full saved image name, eg: Addis, George Thorburn - Apptd to Straits Settlements Legislative Assembly - Times 13 Feb 1886 Pg.10 Col. A, Issue 31682.png - the saved Times 'article' can vary in size from a few lines to a whole page. So I generally crop the section of interest from the saved image in order to obtain a printed image, or series of images, which is/are easy to read. I find the graphics program 'ACDC' fastest for this purpose, but most graphics programs are suitable. Cheers, John John Addis-Smith Thurleigh, Bedfordshire, England