Making the most of free, unrestricted texts–a first look at the promise of the Text Creation Partnership

Welzenbach, Rebecca. Text Creation Partnership Project Outreach Librarian, MPublishing, University of Michigan Library

Title: Making the most of free, unrestricted texts–a first look at the promise of the Text Creation Partnership

Abstract: In April 2011, the Text Creation Partnership announced that 2,231 transcribed and SGML/XML encoded texts from the Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) corpus were freely available to the public, with no restrictions on their use or distribution. This is the first set of TCP texts to have all restrictions lifted. We have already seen significant interest in studying, manipulating, and publishing these texts, which has given us a peek at what might happen in a few years, when the much larger EEBO-TCP also archive becomes available to the public. The release was met with enthusiasm by power users who were eager to work directly with the XML files, but frustration by those who expected a full-service platform to interact with the texts. This presentation will discuss the mixed reactions to the release of the ECCO-TCP texts; offer examples of how people are starting to work with them; and highlight some of the questions, challenges, and opportunities that have arisen for the TCP as a result.