One of the things I really like about EEBO Interactions is that unlike so much of the digital world, which prompts us and scolds us and reminds us and worries us into action, EEBO Interactions offers readers an opportunity to correct, tweak, and probe the digital world. Readers can post queries. They can email other contributors. They can correct incorrectly dated title pages, note cross-referenced material, suggest attributions, refer readers to pertinent sources, such as ODNB entries, articles, or books. Where these sources are electronic, links can be provided so that subsequent readers can check those sources instantly from within EEBO.
This interactive function points the way forward to a more mature and more robust resource, not just because entries themselves become more substantial–though that is one significant consequence–but because the database itself becomes more relational, more flexible, less static.
We have not yet discussed the power of electronic resources to go beyond their fixed print relatives. It would be great to hear from readers about the nature of this new relational power–and of how it might best be put to use within EEBO Interactions to strengthen EEBO, not just as a provider of texts, but as an evolving bibliographical database in its own right.
