The Central and Eastern European Online Library (C.E.E.O.L.) is an online archive providing access to full text articles from humanities and social science scholarly journals on Central, Eastern and South Eastern European topics.

The subject areas include: anthropology

Anthropology

Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...

, culture

Culture

Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...

 and society

Society

A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations...

, economy

Economy

An economy consists of the economic system of a country or other area; the labor, capital and land resources; and the manufacturing, trade, distribution, and consumption of goods and services of that area...

, gender studies

Gender studies

Gender studies is a field of interdisciplinary study which analyses race, ethnicity, sexuality and location.Gender study has many different forms. One view exposed by the philosopher Simone de Beauvoir said: "One is not born a woman, one becomes one"...

, history

History

History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

, Judaic studies, fine arts, literature

Literature

Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...

, linguistics

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

, political sciences and social sciences

Social sciences

Social science is the field of study concerned with society. "Social science" is commonly used as an umbrella term to refer to a plurality of fields outside of the natural sciences usually exclusive of the administrative or managerial sciences...

, philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

, religion

Religion

Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...

, reviews, etc.

C.E.E.O.L. is initiated and maintained by Questa.Soft GmbH in Frankfurt am Main, which is a software development company, founded in 1998 by two partners, Wolfgang Klotz and Aurelian Urzica. From the very beginning, the company started to build up the technical and logistical basis for the future operation of C.E.E.O.L. In 2000 the company completed the development of a content management pilot project and offered publishers from Central and Eastern Europe

Central and Eastern Europe

Central and Eastern Europe is a term describing former communist states in Europe, after the collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989/90. In scholarly literature the abbreviations CEE or CEEC are often used for this concept...

 a platform for the online distribution of their publications—C.E.E.O.L.

C.E.E.O.L. may be seen as an heir of the East/West European Cultural Centre “Palais Jalta” in Frankfurt am Main which, for the twelve-year period from 1991 to 2003, attempted primarily to balance the flow of information from West to East with a significant counter current in the opposite direction. C.E.E.O.L., as the “virtual successor” of “Palais Jalta”, shares this aim and continues this work on a global scale via the Internet.

As a logical enhancement of C.E.E.O.L. and following numerous requests from C.E.E.O.L.’s partner publishers, Questa.Soft GmbH decided to provide the Eastern European publishers with an additional online platform DiBiDo dedicated to e-books from and about Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe, covering the same subject, language and geographic areas as the periodical database. The DiBiDo platform allows the participating publishers to distribute their books in digital format, to readers from across the world.

Further reading

• Robert Murray Davis, East Goes West. New Ventures in Eastern European Publishing, in: World Literature Today, May–August 2004, pages 53–55

External links

• Official site of DiBiDo, the e-book platform launched by C.E.E.O.L.
• Article in German by Anita Strecker, Osteuropa fängt in Oberrad an, in: Frankfurter Rundschau
  Frankfurter Rundschau
  The Frankfurter Rundschau is a German daily newspaper, based in Frankfurt am Main. It is published every day but Sunday as a city, two regional and one nationwide issues and offers an online edition as well as an e-paper...
  
  , 21.03.2007
• Article in German by Wolfgang Klotz, Alle wieder da, in: Frankfurter Rundschau, 10.10.2007