About Us

GENERAL INFORMATION

ACLS Humanities E-Book (HEB) is an online collection of approximately 3,700 books of high quality in the humanities, accessible through institutional and individual subscription. These titles are offered by the ACLS in collaboration with twenty-seven learned societies, over 100 contributing publishers, and the MPublishing Division of the University of Michigan Library. The result is an online, fully searchable collection of high-quality books in the Humanities, recommended and reviewed by scholars. These are works of major importance that remain vital to both scholars and advanced students, and are frequently cited in the literature. (See title list.) The collection features unlimited multi-user access and free, downloadable MARC records. HEB is available 24/7 on- and off-campus through standard web browsers.

HEB, which launched in September 2002, adds hundreds of books annually to the collection, including several carefully selected new XML titles that have the potential to use new media to communicate the results of scholarship in new ways. Titles now include monographs, collected essays and primary sources.

To guarantee the scope and quality of this interdisciplinary collection, ACLS collaborates with learned societies and university presses to assist scholars in the electronic publication of high-quality works in the humanities, to explore the intellectual possibilities of new media, and to help assure the continued viability of scholarship in today’s changing publishing environment.

Fields currently covered include Area Studies in the following: Australasian/Oceanian, Byzantine, Canadian, Caribbean, Central European, Jewish Studies, Native Peoples of the Americas, Women’s Studies. Historical Studies include African, American, Asian, Comparative/World, Eastern European/Russian, Economic, European, Latin American, Law, Medicine, Methods/Theory, Middle East, and Science/Technology. HEB also encompasses the fields of Archaeology, Art and Architectural History, Biblical Studies, Bibliographic Studies, Film and Media Studies, Folklore, History of the Book, Linguistics, Literature, Literary Criticism, Musicology, Performance Studies (theater, music, dance, performance), Philosophy, Political Science, Religion, and Sociology.

HEB was originally funded as the ACLS History E-Book Project in June 1999 by a $3-million, five-year grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with additional funding from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation. Now in its second phase, HEB achieved self-sustainability in the spring of 2005 and became ACLS Humanities E-Book in January 2007.

HEB offers the following benefits:

a comprehensive reviewed collection, chosen by scholars and scholarly societies
full-text books presented in three formats: page-image, text and PDF
a fully integrated, cross-searchable platform
universal and 24/7 access to all members of the campus community
unlimited course reserve and classroom use
elimination of off-site, missing, or damaged print copies
in-depth, full-text, rather than extract, search results
free, downloadable MARC records and usage statistics
an expanding collection of print-on-demand titles and handheld editions

rev. 04/02/13