News-sheet — March 2009
I. Latest news
EE in research
Two papers incorporating original research using EE were presented in North America this month.
Dr Neven Leddy (Simon Fraser University, Vancouver) gave an in-house paper to an audience of librarians, academics and students illuminating a previously unknown facet of the famous quarrel between David Hume and Jean Jacques Rousseau; this discovery led Dr Leddy back to a little-explored collection of correspondence in an archive in Geneva. Letters from that collection, edited by Dr Leddy, are due to appear in EE towards the end of the year.
At the ACRL convention in Seattle, Isabel Holowaty (History Librarian of the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford) gave a luncheon presentation to a packed audience of librarians in which she traced Jeremy Bentham's "acquisition" of his famous enlightened prison, the Panopticon.
EE Survey
The Electronic Enlightenment Editorial Team and Oxford University Press are interested to hear how you use and evaluate the EE service. If you could kindly spend 20 minutes today (or sometime before May 1) on the below survey, as a thank you for your time and expertise, you'll be able to claim a free reference book from Oxford - valued at up to $85.00 dollars.
Our research is designed to help best inform decisions on functionality and content updates.
Please complete the questionnaire by May 1, 2009 to be eligible for your free Oxford book. A list of titles to choose from will be available upon completion of the survey.
We're most grateful for your continuing support.
EE posters now available
A4 and A3 Electronic Enlightenment posters are available for subscribers to help advertise to their user community EE's availability in their collections.
If you would like to receive promotional material please email:
Customers outside North and South America
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Customers in North and South America
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MARC records
A reminder that over 3500 MARC records for letter-writers in EE are now available for librarians on request.
New website design coming soon!
The EE project team are consolidating the preparations for our major upgrade in June, which will incorporate a new website design.
II. Anniversaries
300 years of Robinson Crusoe
Three hundred years ago, in 1709, the sailor Alexander Selkirk was rescued from the desert island of Aguas Buenas (now the Isla Robinson Crusoe) in the archipelago of Juan Fernández in the South Pacific, where he had been abandoned four years previously. His experiences inspired what is sometimes called the first novel in English, Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, published in 1719. The eighteenth-century view of Robinson Crusoe (both the person and novel) can be seen in letters such as:
- 24 September 1719 — Alexander Pope to Allen Bathurst, 1st Earl Bathurst;
- 26 October 1765 — George Keith, 10th Earl Marischal to Jean Jacques Rousseau;
- between 11 October and 25 November 1785 — Jeremy Bentham to Jeremiah Bentham;
- 2 February 1798 — Jeremy Bentham to John Freeman Mitford, 1st baron Redesdale.