Bible Facsimiles

I just received an e-mail today letting me know that EEBO and ECCO have started producing printed copies of their scanned Bibles. These are two subscription services that provide online access to scanned documents. EEBO is Early English Books Online and has books, Bibles and documents. There website says this includes items "From the first book published in English through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare, this incomparable collection now contains about 100,000 of over 125,000 titles listed in Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640) and Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700) and their revised editions, as well as the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661) collection and the Early English Books Tract Supplement." ECCO is Eighteenth Century Collections Online. This site has "every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in Great Britain during the eighteenth century, along with thousands of important works from the Americas."

These works have been scanned from the originals. That means they have the errors of the originals and possibly scanning errors as well. This could include loss of text (especially in the gutters), faded letters, and other problems. However, they do provide unique access to otherwise hard to find documents. I don't have any copies yet to review, so I can only pass on what I've heard so far.

I have started including links to some of them on my Bible Facsimiles and Reprints page. (Also available by visiting my site and clicking on Bibliography, then Facsimiles.