Gale Digitizing 18th Century Lit

Of all the ambitious plans announced at ALA, the most remarkable by far is Gale's project to digitize all accessible English-language books published in the 18th century. To be completed over a three-year period, The Eighteenth Century—Complete Digital Edition includes roughly 150,000 titles. Because many of these volumes are one of a kind and inaccessible for scanning, the images—roughly 20 million pages' worth—will be gleaned from 12,000 reels of microfilm.

According to Gale, searching will be supported by "hit-term highlighting and downloadable MARC records…. [A]dditional metadata, including the full text of title and contents pages and direct access to all illustrations, will also be available." Gale's UK Publisher Mark Holland told LJ that the first files covering history and geography books will be available in June 2003.

In addition to the digitization project, Gale is implementing access to journals from Ingenta. Patrons can view their Ingenta subscription titles through the InfoTrac interface. A pay-per-view option is available. Beta testing has been underway at Harvard, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, SUNY Geneseo College Libraries, University of Texas at Austin, and University of Minnesota Twin Cities.