The Daily Pennsylvanian :: Early Novels Database makes 400-year-old books searchable

"If you’ve ventured up to the fifth floor of Van Pelt-Dietrich Library, you’ve probably experienced the urge to turn the doorknob that leads into the glass room containing shelves of precious texts. Though this area is off limits to everyone but staff, you will now be able to search for some these books through Penn’s new database. Early Novels Database is a bibliographic database that consists of American and British fiction novels from the years 1660-1830, and it is revolutionizing humanities research. While the collection of over 3,000 physical books will be searchable online, the texts will not be digitalized. Rather, END will focus on making metadata searchable. 'We view ourselves as a second generation metadata driven digital humanities project,' END faculty director Rachel Buurma said. Lynne Farrington, the curator of Printed Books at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Van Pelt, defined metadata as 'information about the work.' The 'work' END focuses on is paratext, which includes titles, the claimed gender of the author, prefaces, title pages and circulating library lists of borrowers. The database draws this information from specific physical copies of these novels. The END project began in 2003 under the leadership of English professor Michael Gamer and Farrington. After four years of work, the project failed to receive funding but was resurrected in 2009. The novels are catalogued in such a way that researchers can search for information that is not provided by the main text, such as titles that include the word 'adventure,' or female authors. This type of search allows scholars to draw connections that they may not have originally considered between books."