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