Gale Cengage anticipates that Nineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO) will be an extensive database with multiple content types, covering most regions of the world, developed in a rolling release over several years. The release of the first four collection modules (which Gale refers to as “Archives”) is scheduled for spring 2012. 

The content sources will include monographs, newspapers, manuscripts, photographs, maps, ephemera, and statistical data. The collection modules planned at this point are topically based, in addition to some devoted to specific regions. Across the topical modules, and possibly within individual modules, content is intended to integrate sources from various regions including the Americas (North, Central and South), Africa, East and South Asia, and the Middle East, as well as Europe. Gale Cengage has committed to twelve collection modules (or “Archives”):

NCCO 1                        British politics and society (spring 2012)

NCCO 2                        Asia and the West: diplomacy and cultural exchange (ministerial and

                                      consular papers; foreign missions)  (spring 2012)

NCCO 3                        British Theatre, Music and Literature: High and Popular Culture (spring 2012)

NCCO 4                        CORVEY collection of European literature 1790-1840 (spring 2012)

NCCO 5                        South Asia (proposed) (spring 2013)

NCCO 6                        History of science (proposed) (spring 2013)

NCCO 7                        History of photography (spring 2013)

NCCO 8                        19^th-century Americana (spring 2013)

NCCO 9–12                 to be determined “in collaboration with NCCO customers and partner libraries”

In the initial releases for 2012, approximately 65% of the content will be from existing film and 35% will be newly digitized. (See the Appendix to this review, listing identified microform sources.) A large portion of the initial content will come from the British Library and from the British National Archives, where Gale is actively scanning. There will also be extensive content from the British courts, including currently uncataloged material. Eventually the collection will encompass existing Gale collections as well, which will require reindexing for a newly developed research platform.  

A key criterion for inclusion is avoidance of overlap with existing digitized nineteenth-century source documents, especially the content scanned in the Google Books project and available in HathiTrust. This raises questions about the comprehensiveness of content, since many key documents and monographs are already available elsewhere.

Most of the initial content will be English language, although future collection modules will expand coverage to other European and also some non-western language content.

Outstanding questions about the product under development were submitted to Gale, with the following responses:

• Q: What are the relative sizes of the collection modules, in terms of documents and total page images? What is the estimated size of the overall collection? A: “The plan for NCCO allows for a total of approximately eight to twelve million pages per year, across four Archives per year, for the next three years, with an overall program size in excess of thirty million pages. The exact sizes of the following eight Archives are undetermined but will be dictated by the editorial criteria for each Archive. It is not anticipated that each Archive will be equal to the next in size or document count, but rather that the total number of pages/documents will reflect the quantity of content needed to fit the research needs (and budgets) of the subject areas which the Archive is meant to support.”  Note that Gale has further indicated that additional material could be developed after the initial twelve modules, depending on market response.
• Q: What percentage of the overall digital collection will be European content? What percentage will be from North America? A: “This cannot be determined at this point, as we have only just begun to define the next four Archives. This is an evolving program and the direction it takes, guided by our Advisory Board and ad hoc experts in the subject areas on which Gale will focus, will determine where Gale looks for sources and content. For example, if Gale does focus on photography [for one Archive] as currently planned, sources would include the U.S., Germany, France, and Japan—but MAY also include institutions outside of those georgraphies with significant collections related to photography. Gale will announce each library partner as agreements are signed. Gale intends to react to changing research needs and an ever-changing digital landscape (both commercial and public projects abound) and so will not seek to define the program so far into the future as to be unable to be certain that we are bringing unique materials of value to researchers and students into the program at any given time.”
• Q: What percentage of the documents will be unpublished/archival documents? Is there an estimate available for what percentage of pages will be from unpublished documents? A: “At present, Gale is looking outside of monographs and newspapers in a more intensive way than at the corpus of published materials; manuscripts and ephemera will play a large role in the program going forward. However, it is impossible to say, at this point, what the percentages may be.”
• Q: Will the item-level metadata be exposed in various web scale discovery tools? A: “At present, Gale is working through how we are working with discovery tools and services per our Gale Digital Collections, however progress is being made and we anticipate a program to roll-out hopefully in 2013. Per exposed metadata in general, it is viewable and available in most viewing options of the NCCO platform itself, and the underlying scanned XML content is downloadable.”
• Q: What metadata schema (or schemas) will be used for the archival materials? A: “This will be very similar to our current collections structure.”