Early American Imprints, Series II: Shaw‐Shoemaker, 1801‐1819, is another valuable instalment in the Archive of Americana series from Readex, a division of NewsBank. Like the first series of Early American Imprints (Evans), previously reviewed in these columns (RR 2005/68), Shaw‐Shoemaker represents a major digitization effort to make widely available 36,000 books, broadsides, papers, government documents, and other printed texts, which were identified in the 22 two volumes of the original printed set (Shaw and Shoemaker, 1958‐1966). Shaw‐Shoemaker covers an important gap in American bibliographic studies between the Evans checklist, which ends in 1800, and Roorbach's checklist, which starts in 1820. The digital edition takes the texts previously offered by Readex in microcard or microfiche and now presents them in an online format that allows browsing and detailed searching. Begun in 2004, the Shaw‐Shoemaker database contains (as of April 2005) texts through #12,248. Monthly updates are scheduled for release through July 2007. Historians, American studies and literature scholars, students, and anyone interested in the political history or the history of printing in the Americas will find this collection, along with the other digitized collections in the Archive of Americana, an essential tool for research with primary sources.
Like the Evans database, Shaw‐Shoemaker provides many access points to the digitized texts within the collection that can assist researchers and students seeking specialized publications from the period. The indexing of each text is quite extensive, and facilitates rather sophisticated browsing. Users can use convenient tabs to browse the collection by Genre, Subject, Author, the History of Printing, Place of Publication, and Language. The Genres section includes 84 separate categories ranging from Autobiographies and Ballads to Slave Narratives and Treaties. Such detailed classification will be of great value to both the experienced and novice researcher seeking to gain an understanding of the range of publications produced during the early years of the American Republic. Even early academic dissertations from Harvard and other early centres of learning are included. Although some of the more specialized genres currently have few texts, as the set progresses there undoubtedly will be more added, and many texts are cross‐listed in multiple categories. Those interested in the history of the book and the printing trade in the early Americas can refer to the History of Printing and Place of Publication categories to gain an extensive record of books, broadsides, and other publications produced in the 26 states and District of Columbia during that 20‐year span and a thorough list of booksellers, printers, and publishers (arranged in alphabetical order and grouped into those three categories). The Place of Publication section permits the listing of works published in chronological order. Scholars of the Louisiana Purchase, for example, could use this feature to find all proclamations and treaties published in the territory from 1803 forward regarding the sale of the land, and thus establish a documentary trail of the transfer of the territory from Spain, to France, and then to the United States. The Language category also demonstrates the linguistic diversity in early 19th‐century America.
The basic and advanced search features and display options for the digitized texts are similar to those available in the other Archive of Americana products (see also the review of Evans already cited (RR 2005/68)). Searchable fields include Citation Text, Title, Subjects, Authors, Genres, Place of Publication, Publisher, or Shaw‐Shoemaker Document Number. Full‐text searching is allowed, as are date limitations. Standard Boolean operators along with near and adjacency operators can be used, and the database supports truncation (the * symbol). For spelling variants, a common issue with collections of early imprints stemming largely from the limitations of current Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software, the help menu suggests using the wildcard symbol (?) to account for spelling and typographical irregularities. The use of “f” for the letter “s” in early printing, for example, poses a challenge to searchers, so users are advised to use the wildcard symbol for searching words such as “absolute” (enter “ab?olute“) or “Boston” (enter “Bo?ton”). The same rule applies to variant spellings used in the early 1800s. Perhaps future developments in OCR technology and new search algorithms that look for variant spellings will simplify the process, but for now users will have to understand the vagaries of spelling practices and typography in the period in order to use the database to its fullest. The My Collection feature allows users to save selected texts for browsing and searching, and users can save their search histories in My Searches.
The text images are displayed at different magnification levels (50 per cent is the default) and a navigation frame with links to the pages available appears on the left‐hand side of the screen. One of the best features of this product that impresses this reviewer is the ease with which users can view the pages at different scales, print them, and download them. The page can be viewed at up to 300 per cent magnification, displayed in TIFF or PDF formats, displayed without the frames for printing, and individual pages can be selected for downloading. The images are quite clear and legible compared to other databases of digitized images from traditional formats such as microfilm.
The entire Archive of Americana, once completed, should be a major resource for the study of early American history and letters. Early American Imprints, Series II is a vital continuation of the Early American Imprints, Series I collection, and even now while it is still in production, the database is already a vital resource for libraries seeking to provide comprehensive access to the universe of printed works from the early history of the United States.
