INFORUM 2011

Early European Books: A Collaborative Approach to Digital Access

Author

John Tsihlis, ProQuest, Sweden

Documents to download

• Presentation

Abstract

ProQuest’s Early European Books projects offers an innovative model for opening up access to the printed heritage stored in Europe’s rare book libraries. Its aim is to build a comprehensive library of European printed books from the first examples in the 1450s through to the year 1700, by establishing a programme of digitising the holdings of several major libraries. This presentation will provide an outline of ProQuest’s pu­blishing model, digitisation practices and specialist interface, and will also show some samples of the books we have already digitised at the Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagen, the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze and the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague. I will focus in particular on the issues which have arisen in working at the library in Florence, and the solutions which we arrived at to address these.

I will discuss the advantages of our publishing model, which involves ProQuest funding the digitisation and making the digital files freely available in the country where the collection is held from the outset, in return for commercial rights to exploit the files outside that country. This has proved to be a viable model which allows national libraries to fulfil their mission of opening access to their patrons whilst also creating a valuable resource for scholars and students worldwide. I will also demonstrate how our tailored interface, together with our approach to metadata and search tools, does justice to the complex nature of this rich material.

Author's professional CV

John Tsihlis is Senior Representative at ProQuest. He is responsible for exploring new opportunities, developing new partnerships and business development in the higher education and academic market in Northern and Eastern Europe.

John joined ProQuest as a Regional Manager in 2006. Prior to joining ProQuest, John studied business at University of New South Wales, Australia and more recently has served Elsevier as an academic publishers representative before migrating to ProQuest in a similar role.