Technology Fee Funded Projects

Student Access to Project Resources

Benefit to Student Learning

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The UCF Libraries is including comments from the publishers and interested UCF faculty. The comments speak to the quality and importance of both collections and how each will make valuable contributions to teaching and learning on the UCF campus.

The following comments were made by UCF faculty members.

The Eighteenth-Century Collections Online, Part I & Part II are truly astonishing in their scope, covering every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom during the 18th century, along with thousands of important words from the Americas. These outstanding collections will offer UCF students access, not just to thousands and thousands of primary source documents ranging from political pamphlets and sheet music to literature and literary criticism, philosophical treatises, and coverage of important historical events and debates, but to the very foundations of our modern society. Students may have encountered the “invisible hand” theory in their economics courses, and they certainly will have learned about the French Revolution and the American Revolution in history classes, but with the ECCO they will have access to original documents by important figures like Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and May Wollstonecraft whose writings shaped the debates about economics, society, and the individual. More importantly, students will be able to understand these authors within their original contexts rather than reading them in a vacuum. A history, literature, or political science professor, for example, could enrich his or her course by assigning readings from the highly charged public debates about the French Revolution, in which some of the most important and influential statements about the nature of individual rights and democracy emerged in the 1790s. In a very real sense, students could see modern society developing before their eyes.

The ECCO has relevance for students in many disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, and even life and physical sciences. Access to the primary sources contained therein will allow students to explore the significant, surprising connections among the Romantic Movement in literature, the development of the physical sciences (especially chemistry), radical politics, industrial technology, and religious dissent. A student might learn about the one of the founders of modern chemistry, Sir Humphrey Davy’s discovery of chemical elements in his or her chemistry class, or read Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poetry in a British literature survey, but they are unlikely to see the connections between them; yet, with access to the rich holdings of the ECCO, students can trace significant cross-disciplinary influences between these two men, along with James Watt, inventor of the steam engine and, thereby, father of modern industrialization. Assignments that incorporated research in the Eighteenth-Century Collections Online, Part I & Part II would give students a window into one of the most important moments in history, even as they aided students’ acquisition of invaluable technological and information fluency skills. (Anna Maria Jones, Associate Professor, English)

I wholeheartedly support the UCF Libraries’ proposal to purchase the Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Parts I and II through a Technology Fee grant. The Libraries over the years have purchased the large electronic databases Early English Books Online, Evans Early American Imprints, and the Nineteenth Century Collections Online. With the Libraries’ addition of the ECCO that this grant would make possible, the combination of these online repositories would allow our students to have instantaneous access to nearly every work printed in English between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. Online collections such as ECCO enable UCF undergraduate and graduate students to venture into real special collections with a much greater comprehension and appreciation of the primary sources they need for their research. The study of history is cross-disciplinary, and I see this collection – containing as it does books, pamphlets, and treatises covering not only history but also the social sciences, philosophy and religion, and literature – as an invaluable resource that will benefit our students in such areas as military, cultural, economic, diplomatic, and scientific history.

To offer a more specific example from ECCO, I note that topics in one of the early issues of Aberdeen Magazine for 1761 include:

• an essay on the “frailty and fatality of passions”;
• a profile on the character of the Reverend Doctor Stephen Hales, an English clergyman who made major contributions to a range of scientific fields including botany, chemistry, and physiology;
• a letter to the editor with advice for the new magazine;
• a short history of addresses;
• a summary of a speech given to the New York General Assembly; and
• excerpts from a biography of Phillip II of Macedonia

From books and directories, bibles and sheet music, to sermons and pamphlets, the Eighteenth Century Collection Online features a variety of materials to provide a critical tool for both student research and classroom use. (Richard Harrison, Associate University Librarian, Librarian Liaison, Humanities)

The National Geographic Archive will be an invaluable and widely-used addition to our collection. I can see this being beneficial to students throughout the humanities, history, and any discipline that engages with cultural studies. One of the most common assignments we see in the library is students doing research on the history and traditions of a specific culture. Sometimes it can be hard to find resources that provide in-depth information about specific cultures and traditions, but it is almost guaranteed that National Geographic will have something to meet their needs. At the present time, we are limited to the table of contents and very brief abstracts that are available in Academic Search Premier. We then have to direct students to the oversized bound volumes in the general collection. This online archive, however, makes these materials available full-text with all the original images that National Geographic is known for. I recently had the opportunity to explore this resource when we had a free trial. I was impressed with the usability of the interface and the vibrancy of the presentation. It’s worth noting too that the archive not only includes all the original articles and photography, but the inserts that came with the original issues as well. Many of these are maps, which users can print out as high quality pdfs. Also included are reading lists that will help direct students to other resources on their topic. I highly recommend that funds be provided to acquire this important collection. (John Venecek, Assistant University Librarian, Librarian Liaison to English, Writing & Rhetoric, Modern Languages & Literature, Africana Studies, and Latin American Studies)

I am happy to write in support of the UCF Libraries’ proposal to purchase the Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Parts I and II through a Technology Fee grant. I and many of my colleagues in this history department would love to have this resource for our students to use in classes. From the 8,000-9,000 UCF General Education Program students we teach each year to our upper-level classe, which are open to all majors, the overwhelming majority of us could find historical evidence in this collection to support student research. Over the years, the Libraries have purchased the large electronic databases Early English Books Online, Evans Early American Imprints, and the Nineteenth Century Collections Online. With the Libraries’ addition of the Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) that this grant would make possible, the combination of these online repositories would allow our students to have instantaneous access to nearly every work printed in English between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. Online collections such as ECCO enable UCF undergraduate and graduate students to explore real, first hand historical evidence with a much greater comprehension and appreciation of the primary sources they need for their research. The study of history is cross-disciplinary, and I see this collection – containing as it does books, pamphlets, and treatises covering not only history but also the social sciences, philosophy and religion, and literature – as an invaluable resource that will benefit our students in such areas as military, cultural, economic, diplomatic, and scientific history.

I support your grant proposal wholeheartedly and look forward to potentially using this wonderful resource in my classes. (Rose J. Beiler, Associate Professor, Director of Public History, Department of History)

The UCF Libraries will promote the awareness and use of ECCO and the National Geographic Archive through a variety of channels. The Library will actively collaborate with Dr. Melody Bowden at the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning to publicize the collections. The focus will be on educating faculty about the importance of this collection and how it can be used for course assignments. The Libraries will distribute informational brochures during various events, such as the faculty development conferences, and will feature information about the collections in newsletters, library blogs, exhibits and special events such as Cram for Exam. Librarians will teach students about ECCO and the National Geographic Archive during Information Literacy sessions.

Project Success Metrics and Assessment Plan

Project Sustainability

Technology Fee Proposal Budget Narrative

Space Administration

No space is needed for the project.