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ACLS Humanities E-Book (HEB) is an online collection of around 5,000 books of high quality in the humanities, accessible through institutional and individual subscription. These titles are offered by the American Council of Learned Societies in collaboration with thirty-one learned societies, over 100 contributing publishers, and the Michigan Publishing division at 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 HEB considers to be of major importance that remain vital to both scholars and advanced students, and are frequently cited in the literature. 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.

Background
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. The collection launched in September 2002. Now in its second phase, HEB achieved self-sustainability in the spring of 2005 and became ACLS Humanities E-Book in January 2007.

ACLS partnered with the University of Michigan’s Digital Library Production Service (DLPS) after concluding the University of Michigan DLPS the most appropriate distributor for this collection, a role later taken over by the University Library’s Michigan Publishing division.

The 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. Thirty-one learned societies of the American Council of Learned Societies form the working group for ACLS Humanities E-Book. The societies develop lists of recommended titles in the collection, advise the directors on current issues in scholarly communication, and help publish and plan individual XML titles.

HEB 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 include monograph, collected essays and some primary sources.

Special Series
As part of its role as a portal to "such a remarkable collection of works", HEB also makes available several important online series in cooperation with publishers and learned societies. HEB's Special Series currently includes online series from Cambridge University Press, The College Art Association of America (CAA), Collected Writings of Walt Whitman from New York University Press, and West Virginia University Press, among others.