The purpose of this project is to check and see if some of our volumes are already digitized and freely available on the web. We are going to start with books in the Merkle Collection (500 volume collection of 18th and 19th century English graphic satire centers around the work of George Cruikshank. Other artists represented in the collection include Rowlandson, Gillray, Hogarth and "Phiz." Most of the volumes include engraved illustrations, many of which are hand colored.)
Getting Started
- Go to the folder I:\SpecColl\Mass_Digitization.
- Open the Excel file entitled Books_to_Scan_July_2009.xlsx. Click on the second worksheet "Merkle Books."
- You may minimize the Excel file.
- Go to the Library website (www.umbc.edu/library).
- Click on the "Books and More" tab at the top, and select Library Catalog, UMBC holdings.
- Enter "George Cruikshank" into the "Words to Search" box. We will begin by looking for books with his drawings. You do NOT have to look for The Comic Almanack before 1853.
- In the results list, George Cruikshank will not always be the author.
- Maximize the Excel file and fill in the following fields: Title, Author, Year, Publisher, Place
Open Library
http://openlibrary.org/
- Go to the Open Library website (click on the link above).
- Click on the box below the search box "Scanned Books Only."
- Enter the author and book title into the search box.
- A list of books may appear (if there is no scanned version, the results will be empty).
- Check the year, edition, and publisher to see if the same version as our copy has been digitized.
- If there is a scanned version, copy and paste the URL under the Open Library column. PLEASE note if the copy differs from ours, and how. (Ex: scanned copy from 1836, our copy from 1831).
Google Books
http://books.google.com/?hl=en
- Go to the Google books search (see link above).
- Enter the author and book title into the search box.
- Check each of the books in the results list against our version.
- Mark under the Google Books column if the copies differ or if there is one that is the same as ours.
- If there is a full text version, copy and paste the URL.
- If there isn't a full text version, write "no full text."
Project Gutenberg
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
- Go to Project Gutenberg (at the URL above).
- On the upper left hand side, fill in the author and title.
- Check the results against our versions of the book.
- Under the Project Gutenberg column, mark whether there are any copies available for download or online full text. PARTICULARLY check whether there is an HTML version with images.
- If so, paste the URL in the column.