Electronic Text

Electronic Texts

There is a wealth of information online in text format, from full length books to short works.

It's possible now, using a universal format such as ASCII, HTML, or PDF, to provide huge databases of electronic documents via web pages. The Internal Revenue Service, for example, provides all the IRS forms, schedules, and instructions online in PDF format, eliminating the necessity of going to the library or post office to pick up paperwork.

Instances where dated information becomes impractical to store – back issues of magazines for example – become simple archive projects on the internet, and in most cases include a search feature as well.

Internal Revenue Service
http://www.irs.gov

Computer Magazine Archive
http://cma.zdnet.com/

Xerox PARC Map Viewer
http://pubweb.parc.xerox.com/map/

NASA's Galileo Project - pictures of Jupiter
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/

One of the earliest pioneers of online publishing is Project Gutenberg, which offers 750 books free to download. Their goal is to give away one trillion electronic books by the year 2001. Since many classics have reverted to the public domain, it's a wonderful public service to make them available online. Additionally, putting something controversial like banned books online is an interesting facet of the web – you can't really control the dissemination of information when something like the internet exists.

From Project Gutenberg's site:

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.

Internet Public Library - 3,700 books and other texts
http://www.ipl.org/

Internet Book Information Center - fresh news and views for book lovers
http://www.internetbookinfo.com/

TeleRead - bring the e-books home
http://teleread.org/

Literature collections - most in ASCII text format
gopher://wiretap.area.com/11/Books

Gutenberg project - 750 books free to download
http://promo.net/pg/history.html

Online Books Page - links to over 7,000 listings
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/books.html

Banned books online
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/People/spok/banned-books.html

World literature online
http://sunsite.unc.edu/ibic/IBIC-World-Lit.html

Virtual Ink
http://www.pictograph.com/Virtualink.html

The Paper

For the paper for this class, email me and include this information:

sites of electronic texts explored (list at least five)
list five individual works read
compare five works from #2 with traditional texts (the differences, pros and cons, of the electronic version vs. the printed material)
analyze the differences in the universal formats and their popularity on the web
comparison shop for an e-book and describe your findings in terms of features and cost