The winners came from across the United States:

• Grand Prize: Jacqueline Wernimont (University of Iowa)
• First Prize: Brian Platzer (Columbia University)
• Second Prize: Anne Hyde (Lawrence University)
• Honorable Mention: Brian Kanner (University of Florida)
• Honorable Mention: Sheeba Madan (Indiana University)

Jacqueline Wernimont’s essay, “‘Dangerous Dissenters’: Explorations of Methods and Ethics of Discipline in John Milton’s Paradise Lost,” was the second grand prize winner to tap Milton’s classic.  Last year, Irina Dumitrescu explored how Milton takes advantage of existing associations of gunpowder with the devil to support ideas and characteristics of his epic in “False Glitter: The Meaning of Gunpowder in Paradise Lost.”

In addition to Paradise Lost, this year’s wining entries examined topics such as colonial environmentalism, early modern views of the deaf and dumb, and notions of femininity in Titus Andronicus and Julius Caesar.

Undergraduate research papers that rely on research using the EEBO collection were eligible for entry in the competition. EEBO is a Web-based resource containing full-page images of 125,000 books listed in the Pollard and Redgrave, Wing, and Thomason Tracts catalogs. With its substantial coverage of printed material found in England between 1473 and 1700, EEBO provides rich research possibilities for students interested in a wide variety of topics in early modern studies.

The goal of the contest is to encourage undergraduate students to explore and describe the value of the information that can be obtained through EEBO.  Students access the collection via the Internet at libraries and institutions subscribing to EEBO.  The competition was co-sponsored by ProQuest and the Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership.

First prize winner Brian Platzer’s essay, “Colonial Environmentalism: Harriot and Raleigh’s manipulation of the New World Landscape,” looks at Thomas Harroit’s A Briefe and True Report of the New Founde Land of Virginia (1590) and Sir Walter Raleigh’s Discovery of the large, rich and beautiful Empire of Guiana (1595).

In his abstract, Platzer writes: “EEBO provided me with a bank of searchable texts that had probably never been studied in conjunction with the Raleigh’s Discovery.  I researched to the point when criticism stopped, and using EEBO, I was able to go a step farther by searching and then incorporating texts contemporary to these writers. This paper…demonstrates the power of EEBO keyword search on analysis of early English texts”

Entries were judged through a blind review process by a committee of professionals and scholars drawn from both the information industry and from academic contributors to EEBO. Quality and creativity of the thesis, potential for the essay to contribute to the field and to early modern studies, and the significance for highlighting EEBO’s usefulness in undergraduate research are among the criteria. To read copies of the winning essays, go to: http://www.lib.umich.edu/tcp/eebo/edu/edu_win_03.html

Free trials of EEBO are available. Libraries may receive more information by contacting their account representative at 1-800-521-0600, ext. 3183 or 3452 (outside the U.S., call +44-1-223-215-512) or pqsales@il.proquest.com . Editors may call 1-800-521-0600, ext. 6489 or email pr@il.proquest.com .

ProQuest Information and Learning and the Early English Books Online Text Creation partnership are sponsoring another essay competition for 2004.  For details and guidelines, visit: http://www.lib.umich.edu/eebo/edu/edu_essay.html .  Deadline for receipt of essays is October 31, 2004.   For more information about the essay competition, contact Shawn Martin at shawnmar@umich.edu

The Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership (EEBO-TCP) is currently undertaking the task of converting 25,000 works found in EEBO into searchable text. While the University of Michigan University Library, Oxford University, and ProQuest Information and Learning initiated the EEBO-TCP, over 65 libraries are currently instrumental in making this project possible. The partnership is devoting five years to the first phase of the conversion process, which will create SGML text files and link them to EEBO page images, thereby allowing users to perform keyword searches as well as see features of the original work. The library partners in the conversion project also act as co-owners of the encoded text files, enjoying full rights of access, adaptation, and distribution.   For more information, visit the EEBO-TCP project site at http://www.lib.umich.edu/eebo/ .

ProQuest Information and Learning is a world leader in collecting, organizing, and publishing information worldwide for researchers, faculty, and students in libraries and schools. Known widely for its strength in business and economics, general reference, humanities, social sciences, and STM content, the company develops premium databases comprising periodicals, newspapers, dissertations, out-of-print books, and other scholarly information from more than 8,500 publishers worldwide.  Users access the information through the ProQuest® Web-based online information system, Chadwyck-Healey^TM electronic and microform resources, UMI® microform and print reference products, eLibrary^TM and SIRS® educational resources, and XanEdu^TM online faculty and student resources.  For more information about ProQuest Information and Learning, visit www.il.proquest.com .