The following review appeared in the July 2007 issue of CHOICE:

The Digital Library of the Catholic Reformation.  Alexander Street.  Annual academic subscription price begins at around $450.00, based on budget and FTE. 

URL:  http://www.alexanderstreet.com 

[Visited April ‘07]  A companion to The Digital Collection of Protestant Texts  (CH, Feb ’04, 41-3359), this rich database will eventually contain the searchable full text of over 1,000 works from more than 250 European Catholic authors published 1500-1700.  New titles are added quarterly, with a proposed completion date of March 2008.  The database covers a broad range of materials including theological treatises, apologetic and polemical works, catechisms, homiletic and devotional materials, biography, and other genres.  Major theological, ecclesiastical, and spiritual authors, alongside many lesser-known writers, provide a wide perspective on Catholic views during this period.  The works appear in the original Latin, English, French and other European languages.  In addition to searching text, researchers can view digital images of the pages (usually first editions of the texts).  The powerful search engine, based on the PhiloLogic software developed at the University of Chicago, supports Boolean, proximity, and wildcard searching.  In addition to standard searchable fields such as author, date, language, and place of publication (city or country), one can also search or refine searches by Biblical citations, genre, or religious order (e.g., Jesuit, Dominican). 

Contents are also cataloged by an extensive index of more than 150 topics—religious and theological plus cultural and social (e.g., science, roles of women, arts, economics).  The database offers a number of options for organizing and displaying search results.  Despite the complex search capabilities, the graphical user interface is fairly intuitive, with sufficient online help to assist novice users.  The project’s senior editors are Simon Ditchfield (Univ. of York), a contributor to the “Oxford History of the Christian Church” series, and Brad Gregory (Univ. of Notre Dame), an award-winning writer and expert on Reformation and early modern Catholic history.  The fact that the texts are in the original language may limit this database’s usefulness for many undergraduates.  However, its contents and search capabilities make it an indispensable tool for graduate students and professors researching the religious thought of this period, whether they are historians or students of theology/spirituality.