ASSOCIATES (vol. 4, no. 2, November 1997) - associates.ucr.edu

Table of Contents


 

                *INFO FROM THE SUPERHIGHWAY:
                FULL TEXT... AND THEN WHAT?*
 
                             by
 
                        Linda Putnam
              Senior Library Technical Assistant
                      Documents Library
                   Florida State University
                    putnaml@mail.firn.edu


I am really fascinated  when I watch a science fiction show
such as "Star Trek: Voyager" or "Star Trek: Deep Space 9"
and see the actors walking around with a "book" in their
hands.  Their "books" are small hand-held computers with
electronic text.  What interests me is that the technology
exits today to do this very thing.
 
How many times have you seen children and adults playing with a
hand-held electronic game?  It is taking it only one step further
to put the full text of a book in it rather than a game.  After
this technology is mastered, manufacturers will develop "extras"
such as a button to turn your "book" into a large print edition,
or a button which will give you the audio version.  Then you would
have to have the Illustrated version and the red letter edition
and so on and so on and so on...  Each new innovation
would cost more, of course.
 
 This progression in the development of the "book" may
be coming sooner than you, or I, think because the first step in
any major project is to turn the "data" into electronic format.
In this case, the "data" would be the full text of a book or any
other publication.
 
 There are two major projects, that I know
of, working to type or scan the full text of non-copyright
materials into their databases, as well as many, many sites
on the web which have individual works.  There are also sites
from libraries working hard to develop full text electronic
reserves, professors working hard to develop electronic
classes and much, much more.
 
 The Gutenberg Project, started by Michael Heart, and
Columbia University's Bartleby Project are the two largest
projects which have been specifically designed to enter the
full text of books in electronic format.  There are probably
more, as the links you find with a simple search are almost
endless.
 
 There is, in fact, so much out there that I have had
to limit the parameters of this column to sites which have
either full text of several "books" or which have links to
multiple full text sites.  Many of these sites can and do
overlap, giving the same or similar information.  This is
especially true with the Gutenberg Project links, but some of
these links will be easier for you to use than others
depending upon your location and the type of equipment you
have.
 
 Once again, I must say that I have a strong opinion about
this, and how it will affect the libraries of the future, but then,
I have a strong opinion about almost everything.  For the
purposes of this column, my opinion does not count.  I am
also not promoting one site over another.  All have their
advantages and disadvantages.  I hope you enjoy the links
below; I know I have.  Good luck and happy reading.
 
 
http://www.vuw.ac.nz/non-local/gutenberg/home.html
 Project Gutenberg Home Page.  This project was
named after the inventor of the printing press.  Project
Gutenberg began as the brain child of Michael Heart in 1971.
 He was given an operator's account with $100,000,000 of
computer time and he wanted to use it for something
worthwhile.  His idea was to create a database which stores,
retrieves and searches what is stored in our libraries.  The
primary goal is to encourage the creation and distribution of
full-text materials. Their hope is to have 10,000 e-texts in
distribution by the end of the year 2001.
 Some of the sites which host Project Gutenberg etexts
are listed below.
 
 http://www.promo.net/pg/lists/list.html#FTPsites
      Project Gutenberg e-text listings - most are FTP
           sites.
      PROMOTE - An award winning world wide
service hosting many interesting sites including Project
Gutenberg.  Contains multiple links to electronic text
materials.
 ftp://uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu/pub/etext/gutenberg/
      University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
 ftp://ftp.prairienet.org/pub/providers/gutenberg/
      Prairienet - Champaign, Illinois
 ftp://sailor.gutenberg.org/pub/gutenberg/
      Sailor's Gutenberg FTP Server - Baltimore,
Maryland
 ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/.21/gutenberg/
      Walnut Creek CDROM Silicone Valley,
California.
 ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/
      University of North Caroliona Chapel Hill, NC.
 ftp://viemeister.com/pub/gutenberg/
      Viemeister Dallas, Texas.
 ftp://archive.org/pub/gutenberg/
      Archive.org S. Francisco, California.
 ftp://ftp.pinknet.cz/pub/etext/gutenberg/
      Czech Republic Pinknet
 ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/media/literary/collections/project_
      gutenberg/gutenberg
      England.
 ftp://ftp.cnam.fr/pub/Gutenberg/
      France.
      http://www.informika.ru/windows/books/gutenb/list.html
             Ministry of Education of Russia.  (compressed
                    files only)
       ftp://ftp.lbi.ro/pub/Books/Gutenberg
               Bucharest High School Computer Science
       ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/etext/gutenberg/
               Swedish University Network SUNNET
       http://www.lib.virginia.edu/wess/germtext.html
               German literature on the Internet.  (In German)
       http://www.logicnet.com/bbsfiles/file0012.php
               Logical Solutions.  Has 1,935 files but you must
               register with them to use the files.
 
 
http://milawa.gh.cs.su.oz.au/Users/matty/Shakespeare/texts
       Full text of most of Shakespeare's works.  All are
       public domain works which can be freely distributed.
       They are listed in approximate chronological order of
       composition for each
group.http://www.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby/
       Columbia University Project. -- Project Bartleby began
       in January of 1993.  The main rules of the project are: 1.
       Only accurate loyal editions will be accepted. 2. There will
       be free public access to the  materials. 3. Selections will
       be carefully and well researched before being added to the
       collection. and 4. Only state-of-the-art presentations will
       be used.
 
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/books.html
       Online books page.  --  Index of thousands of online
       books.
 
http://lcweb.loc.gov/nls/pe.html
       Library of congress source for electronic texts.
       Contains links to selected resources of full-text materials.
 
http://the-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/works.html
       Complete works of William Shakespeare.  The webs
       first edition of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare.
 
http://www-library.lbl.gov/Library/text/ftext/ebk.html
       Books in full-text from the Berkeley Lab Library.
 
http://www.uakron.edu/library/ftbooks.html
       The University of Akron Library full text books.
 
http://www.uakron.edu/library/ftjournal.html
       The University of Akron Library full text journals.
 
http://www.uakron.edu/library/fthist.html
       The University of Akron Library full text historical
       documents.
 
http://un2sg1.unige.ch/www/athena/html/author01.html
       Several lists with links to more than 3700 e-texts
       (philosophy, science, classics, literature, history,
       economics, etc.).
 
http://newton.uor.edu/library/ftbook.html
       Full-text books Full-Text Book WebSites Online
       Library of Electronic Texts (University of Virginia)
       Online Books Page (Carnegie Mellon) Project Bartleby
       (Columbia University)
 
http://whitehorse-research.com/m/m1-44.htm
       The Self-Reliance Site provides access to the largest
       organized listing of electronic books, guides, manuals,
       text, poetry, etc.
 
http://web.pace.edu/~codreanu/w.htm
       Birnbaum Library - Click on the arrow and select "Books-
       full text" Has materials on science, technology and health
       from the National Academy Press.
 
http://www.unl.edu/agnicpls/agnic.html
       AgNIC Plant Science Homepage
 
http://www.sckans.edu/library/onlinop.html
       Online Options from the Southwestern College Library
 
http://www.ed.gov/pubs/
       United States Department of Education Publications in
       full text.
 
http://www.cliffnotes.com/
       Good site which is under construction.  I'm not sure
       when it will be available, but keep trying.
 
 
http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/English/bshelf.html
       EOL Book Shelf has electronic versions of many books
       (full text).
 
http://ericps.ed.uiuc.edu/npin/npinhome.html
       National Parent Information Network
       Resources from the ERIC Clearinghouse on
       Elementary and Early Childhood Education.
 
http://www.wimmera.net.au/wrls/books.htm
       Wimmera Regional Library Service.  Books and book
       reviews.  Places to find full-text books on the Web.
 
http://www.lib.utulsa.edu/guides/rsrchtxt.htm
       Online Books and Journals
       An increasing number of books and journals are
       available in full or partial text on the Internet. The books
       tend to be classics that are outside of copyright protection.
 
http://whitehorse-research.com/m/m1-57.htm
       The Self-Reliance Site -- Self-Reliance Library:
       Reference - Law The Self-Reliance Library [Reference: Law
       Section] provides access to a collection of legal resources.
 
http://whitehorse-research.com/m/m1-22.htm
       The Self-Reliance Site -- The Self-Reliance Library:
       Legal The Self-Reliance Library [Legal Section] is a
       collection of resources, pertaining to legal information of
       interest to self-reliant individuals.
 
http://whitehorse-research.com/m/m1-9.htm
       The Self-Reliance Site -- The Self-Reliance Library:
       Consumer Information The Self-Reliance Library is a collection
       of valuable resources, pertaining to a broad variety of consumer
       issues.
 
http://rs6000.adm.fau.edu/library/ebooks.htm
       Electronic Books and Texts