News & Events
MARC Electronic Records for Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875 Now Available for Online Catalogs
10/01/2002
October 2002
MARC Electronic Records for Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875 Now Available for Online Catalogs
Electronic records for 2,308 titles of digitized nineteenth-century American fiction are now freely available to libraries who wish to add these valuable research aids to their online catalogs. Indiana University and the University of Michigan converted existing microformat bibliographic records to describe the electronic reproduction and, with the cooperation of OCLC, are offering the records to libraries worldwide. A subsequent release for the remaining 250 records is planned for December 2002.
"This marks an important contribution to scholarship and provides a real cost-savings to other libraries," says Harriette Hemmasi, Associate Dean and Director of Technical Services at the Indiana University Libraries. "By converting these records, we save others from having to create their own access-level records. And, we are helping researchers interested in American literature find the information they need."
The records correspond to the works of American fiction currently being digitized in an ongoing cooperative project of Big Ten university libraries, led by Indiana University. Over half of the nearly 3,000 works listed by Lyle Wright in his landmark 1957 bibliography, American Fiction 1851-1875, are now online and fully searchable. Each title-level record will provide libraries with links to these free public-domain full-text online resources. http://www.letrs.indiana.edu/web/w/wright2/
"The digitization project gives a full picture of fiction published during this period in American history," says project director Perry Willett. "It's our heritage." Launched in January 2002, the site hosted more than 11,000 searches in its first 12 days. Wright's three-volume work listing American fiction from 1774 through 1900 is considered the best bibliography of American adult fiction of the eighteenth and nineteenth century.
The digitized page images were created from Research Publications' microfilm set American Fiction, 1774-1910 (vol. 2). OCLC provided the microformat records and has supported the record-conversion project. The MARC electronic records will also be contributed to WorldCat, OCLC's union catalog.
Led by Mechael Charbonneau, Indiana University, and Jackie Shieh, University of Michigan, with input from colleagues James Castrataro (Indiana Univ.), Perry Willett (Indiana Univ.), and Judith Hopkins (SUNY Buffalo), the conversion team streamlined the otherwise time-consuming process of creating new records by batch processing the microform records.
The nine libraries working to digitize the Wright's listing of American fiction are members of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), an academic consortium of the Big Ten universities and the University of Chicago. Indiana University's Digital Library Program is the project host.
To access the records, go to: http://www.letrs.indiana.edu/web/w/wright2/marc/index.html
MARC Electronic Records for Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875 Now Available for Online Catalogs
Electronic records for 2,308 titles of digitized nineteenth-century American fiction are now freely available to libraries who wish to add these valuable research aids to their online catalogs. Indiana University and the University of Michigan converted existing microformat bibliographic records to describe the electronic reproduction and, with the cooperation of OCLC, are offering the records to libraries worldwide. A subsequent release for the remaining 250 records is planned for December 2002.
"This marks an important contribution to scholarship and provides a real cost-savings to other libraries," says Harriette Hemmasi, Associate Dean and Director of Technical Services at the Indiana University Libraries. "By converting these records, we save others from having to create their own access-level records. And, we are helping researchers interested in American literature find the information they need."
The records correspond to the works of American fiction currently being digitized in an ongoing cooperative project of Big Ten university libraries, led by Indiana University. Over half of the nearly 3,000 works listed by Lyle Wright in his landmark 1957 bibliography, American Fiction 1851-1875, are now online and fully searchable. Each title-level record will provide libraries with links to these free public-domain full-text online resources. http://www.letrs.indiana.edu/web/w/wright2/
"The digitization project gives a full picture of fiction published during this period in American history," says project director Perry Willett. "It's our heritage." Launched in January 2002, the site hosted more than 11,000 searches in its first 12 days. Wright's three-volume work listing American fiction from 1774 through 1900 is considered the best bibliography of American adult fiction of the eighteenth and nineteenth century.
The digitized page images were created from Research Publications' microfilm set American Fiction, 1774-1910 (vol. 2). OCLC provided the microformat records and has supported the record-conversion project. The MARC electronic records will also be contributed to WorldCat, OCLC's union catalog.
Led by Mechael Charbonneau, Indiana University, and Jackie Shieh, University of Michigan, with input from colleagues James Castrataro (Indiana Univ.), Perry Willett (Indiana Univ.), and Judith Hopkins (SUNY Buffalo), the conversion team streamlined the otherwise time-consuming process of creating new records by batch processing the microform records.
The nine libraries working to digitize the Wright's listing of American fiction are members of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), an academic consortium of the Big Ten universities and the University of Chicago. Indiana University's Digital Library Program is the project host.
To access the records, go to: http://www.letrs.indiana.edu/web/w/wright2/marc/index.html
