Published Thursday, January 29, 1998, in thePhiladelphia Inquirer.
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Sharing Gutenberg's vision -- digitally




tech.k12/Joyce Kasman Valenza







_ L'envoi
Robert Southey





Books travel the world a bit faster these days. They are free and
downloadable.

Looking back on the revolutionary technology of this millennium, few would
argue that a major development came right in the middle, with the invention
of the printing press in 1455.

With information no longer a commodity reserved for nobles and clergy, a
middle class developed; a renaissance flourished; a reformation was fueled.
Gutenberg's invention of a way to inexpensively mass-produce the written
word released an information epidemic, creating a hunger for knowledge that
continues to spread.

Thanks to Internet pioneers with visions of similar clarity, the great
works of literature have become even more accessible.

Remember how tough it was to dig up a poem or short story buried in an
anthology? Or to find that one perfect quote from Shakespeare or the Bible?
There are the cumbersome indexes. There are concordances that log every
occurrence of a Shakespearean word.

But if you have ever used this print approach, you know you also have to
have the anthologies and complete works on hand for any of the tools to be
of use.

Electronic or digital texts come to the rescue, for the English teacher
looking for Maupassant's "The Necklace" to use in tomorrow's class or the
student looking for a copy of "The Raven" or the quote for the Chaucer term
paper. Public domain literature is now available on demand, and is easily
searchable.

One of the most exciting aspects of the Internet is that it does not always
mean "out with the old, in with the new." The old is continually being
rediscovered and preserved. In fact, the literature now available is of the
good old variety. Books currently available online were written before
1922. Under copyright law, books become public domain after 75 years.
Proposed congressional legislation would add 20 years to the limit.

But just who are today's electronic scribes, the major players in the
digital library game?

The people who created Project Gutenberg had a vision. It started as a
glint in the eye of Michael Hart way back in Internet history  -- in 1971
-- when he entered the text of the Declaration of Independence onto his
college server.

Since then, Hart and Project Gutenberg, http://promo.net/pg/, have
digitized more than 1,000 print documents, among them the classic works of
Western culture. Hart predicted the "greatest value created by computers
would not be computing, but would be the storage, retrieval, and searching
of what was stored in our libraries."

Hart  -- now professor of electronic text at Benedictine University in
Illinois and visiting scientist at Carnegie Mellon University  -- set an
example in democratic access by insisting that documents be stored in
plain-vanilla ASCII text, to assure the widest possible access. He chose
text carefully, selecting works that he believed would be the most desired
by the largest audience. The Project Gutenberg philosophy is "to make
information, books and other materials available to the general public in
forms a vast majority of the computers, programs and people can easily
read, use, quote and search." The goal is to have 10,000 books online by
2001.

There are other e-text pioneers. The English Server at Carnegie Mellon
University, http://english-
server.hss.cmu.edu/, has been specializing in the online publishing of
humanities texts since 1990. Begun by graduate students as a means of
sharing scholarly resources, it now offers more than 18,000 works of
research, criticism, novels, hypertext, and miscellaneous writings from
humanities disciplines. It is a member-run cooperative. It hopes to
demonstrate "the potential that collaborative uses of communications
technologies hold for communities in the arts and humanities," its Web page
says.

Columbia University's Project Bartleby,
http://www.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby/, developed in 1993, is named for
Melville's stubborn scrivener. Bartleby offers a small but highly selective
collection developed around a "Code of Principles of Electronic
Publishing." Bartleby offers editions accurate and faithful to the original
work; free public access to the media for free educational purposes;
freedom of choice from great literature and reference materials as a means
of supporting research, building literacy, and abetting democracy; and
careful selection of public domain materials based on stringent criteria
and state-of-the-art presentation.

These projects are not without their troubles. They are major human efforts
and they cost money. If there is a superhero of the digital text movement,
it is the Universal Library Project, http://www.ul.cs.cmu.edu/first.htm

"The Universal Library helps projects manage the technical end of getting
all collected works of man digitized and available, free to be accessed by
anyone on face of planet. A poor 15-year-old in eastern Siberia can have
easy access to the collected writings of Abraham Lincoln because of our
efforts," says Robert Thibadeau, senior research scientist at the School of
Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University and one of the project's
coordinators.

"At the Universal Library, anytime someone is digitizing we are supportive;
we cheer them on. The English Server is a great case. We lent them
scanners. We helped them find funding. We also saved the Gutenberg Project
when they were in financial trouble. We now manage their finances,"
Thibadeau said.

Digital publishing has opened debate about the future of the book as a
physical document.

As a lover of books and the printed word, I love electronic text. It is
portable. E-texts make it easy to find just the right piece of information.
I can grab a page, copy it and paste it into e-mail for a friend.
Digitization creates unprecedented access and minimizes issues of inequity.
Digital text is easy to transmit. It is certainly easy to store.

But as a lover of books, I realize I treat digitized text in a different
way. I prefer not to read it in a relaxed or linear way. Actually, if I
need to read anything longer than a few pages, I print my text. As
impressive as this publishing medium is, I prefer to do my pleasure reading
offline. And I realize that as impressive as this new access to information
is, it does not really address all issues of equity, and it remains an
ideal, as long as the hardware is not universally available.

What does the future hold for readers of material not in the public domain?
Digital publishing has opened debate about the future of the publishing
industry. Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, in his book The Road Ahead,
predicts that in the years to come we will be seeing a new "information
appliance" that will "give us a lightweight, universal electronic book  --
or e-book  -- which will approximate today's paper book. Inside a case
roughly the same size as today's hardcover or paperback book, you'll have a
display that can show high-resolution text, pictures, and video. You'll be
able to flip pages with your finger or use voice commands to search for
passages you want. Any document on the network will be accessible from such
a device."

Digital publishing is cheap. It bypasses many of the costs of traditional
publishing  -- all but the author's actual work. Consumers avoid paying for
production, distribution and materials. Publishers do not have to account
for overruns. They no longer have to estimate how many copies are needed
for a first printing, eliminating much of the financial risk. They can
provide exactly what they need to meet readers' demands.

Will it be possible to have our books and e-text, too? Let's hope so.



Joyce Kasman Valenza is the librarian at Wissahickon High School. Her
column appears each week in tech.life. E-mail: [log in to unmask]