JISC Historic Texts provides one platform to search four collections:

Early English Books Online (EEBO) - Scanned images, and where available, digital editions of over 125000 books published in English between 1475 and 1700.  

Subjects covered include:

English Literature                                        History                                      Philosophy               

Linguistics                                                    Theology                                   Law                                      

Music                                                             Fine Art                                     Education                                   

Mathematics                                                Science

Early English Books Online includes key works of the period, including the works of Shakespeare and Newton's Principia Mathematica

Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) - A collection of all books published in Great Britain and its colonies from 1700-1799, over 180,000 titles in English, Dutch, French, German, Latin, Spanish and Welsh.  It includes books, bibles, sheet music, sermons and advertisments.  

Subject covered include:

History and Geography                                Social Sciences                              Fine Art, Music, Art and Architecture

Medicine, Science and Technology          Literature and Language              Religion and Philosophy

Law                                                                 General Reference     

Both scanned images of the original documents, and digital editions are available in ECCO.

British Library 19th Century Collection - A collection of more than 65,000 first editions from the 19th Century, which are out of copyright, which include the original typeface and illustrations.  

Subjects covered include:

Philosophy                                          History                                              Poetry & Literature

Both scanned images of the original documents, and digital editions are available.

UK Medical Heritage Library (UKMHL) - images and full-text from more than 66000 European Medical publications from the 19th Century.

JISC Historic Texts has a Basic Search and Advanced Search option.

Basic Search

• Provides a single search field, where you can enter your search terms. The documents retrieved from the search will have your search terms somewhere within the document.
• You have the option to limit your search to one, two or three of the databases
• Use the Date fields to limit to a time period you are interested in
• Choose the number of results displayed per page
• Choose to find books, or pages within books.

Advanced Search 

• Provides multiple search fields, allows you to search for exact phrases, keywords, etc, and allowing you to decide which fields to search,e.g. title, author, place of publication. 
• You have the option to limit your search to one, two or three of the databases
• Use the Date fields to limit to a time period you are interested in
• Choose the number of results displayed per page
• Choose to find books, or pages within books.

Results

The results page will provide a summary of the number of documents matching your search.  You will also see what collection they come from. There are search refinement options on the left of the page if you need to narrow your results.

When you have found the document you want to use, click the title of the document to open it.

Read Online 

You can read the whole of the text online.  The default display option is to provide an image of the pages.  All books in the BL 19 Century Collection, and Eighteenth Century Collection Online (ECCO) are available as page image files, or as text files, which may be clearer to read.  Some of the Early English Books Online (EEBO) documents are also available as text files.

You can navigate through the documents using the forward and back navigation buttons at the left and right of the screen.

Use the toolbar along the top to choose view in single page mode, two page mode, and to enlarge/reduce using the zoom option.

Download or Print

You are able to download or print any document available through JISC Historic Texts.  Use the download options within the reader:

NB: RIS is the standard format used in referencing software and will only extract the citation.

Need help? Chat to Library Staff, Monday - Friday, 9.00-17.00 using the box below.  When "Chat with us" is unavailable email library@st-andrews.ac.uk with your question.