Gale Cengage has designed Nineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO) to be an extensive database with multiple content types, covering most regions of the world. The collection is in a rolling release of twelve modules over several years. The initial four collection modules (called “Archives” by Gale) were released in spring 2012. The next four modules are scheduled for release in spring 2013.

NCCO content sources include monographs, newspapers, manuscripts, photographs, maps, ephemera, and statistical data. The collection modules are topically oriented and intended to integrate in varying degrees sources from world regions including the Americas (North, Central, and South), Africa, East and South Asia, and the Middle East, as well as Europe. Most of the content in the initial four modules will be English language, although future collection modules will expand coverage to other European and also some non-western language content.

The planned topics for the “Archives” are:

Microform and original sources

Modules 1-4

Gale projected that existing microfilm collections would account for approximately 65% of the content in the initial release (modules 1-4), with 35% scanned directly from original sources. (See Appendix A for a list of initially identified microform sources for these modules.)  Two significant sources of original material were the British Library and The National Archives. Gale also targeted previously uncataloged material from the British courts.

Modules 5-8

Gale has indicated that published microform sources will make up a smaller component of subsequent modules, with about 30% of modules 5-8 to come from Gale microfilm collections. (See Appendix B for a list of Gale Primary Source Media microform collections planned as sources for NCCO modules 5-8).

*History of science, technology, and medicine

Sources identified include: American Medical Periodicals, 1797-1900 from the National Library of Medicine; Scientific & Technical Periodicals from the Royal Society of London’s Catalogue of Scientific Papers, 1800-1900 from the National Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia (as well as the Academy’s Minutes and Correspondence1812-1924); journal titles from the aggregated content in Landmarks of Science from Readex (about a 15% overlap with the microform in this collection). See Appendix C for specific journal titles sourced from microfilm.  Original content: rare scientific monographs from the Burndy Library of the Dibner Institute, acquired by The Huntington Library in 2006.

* Photography-the world through the lens

History of Photography from Gale’s Primary Source Media microform collections. Original content: of fourteen photography source collections under consideration from the Library of Congress (as of November 2012) only two are also represented in the online open access site American Memory.

* Women: transnational network

History of Women from Gale’s Primary Source Media microform collections

Other original content sources for modules 5-8 will include The National Archives, and National Archives (U.S.).

Overlap with other digital collections

There are questions about both comprehensiveness and duplication in NCCO, since many key documents and monographs are already available elsewhere. Gale has stated that a key selection criterion is avoidance of overlap with existing digitized 19th-century materials, especially the content scanned for the Google Books project and available in HathiTrust. Particular attention is paid to material having multiple potential sources.

On the other hand, Gale notes that collections of published documents in NCCO, such as the scientific journals,  have not been selected through  individual title checking against licensed or open access digital sources. For instance, at least seven of the American medical journals in module 5 can also be found in American Preiodicals from the Center for Research Libraries (APCRL), distributed by ProQuest. In a sampling of 20% of the science and technology journals included from microform sources (taken from the title lists in appendix C), CRL found 50% overlap with existing digital collections, including licensed content and open access sources.

Note that Gale has indicated plans to eventually integrate their previously digitized 19^th- century content, which they expect will require re-indexing prior to mounting on the newly developed research platform.

Q & A with Gale

In 2011, prior to the initial launch of modules 1-4, questions about the product under development were submitted to Gale in 2011, with the following responses:

Q: What are the anticipated sizes of the collection modules, and the estimated overall size of the completed database?

A: “The plan for NCCO allows for a total of approximately eight to twelve million pages across four Archives per year, for the next three years, with an overall program size in excess of thirty million pages. 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. 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 focuses 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 geographies with significant collections. Gale will announce each library partner as agreements are signed. Gale intends to react to changing research needs and an ever-changing digital landscape, 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 . . . at any given time.”

Q: What percentage of the documents will be unpublished/archival 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.” Note that Gale uses metadata authority sources developed in-house.