Don't get your digital library! $13.95

[Peter Graham <psgraham@syr.edu>]

If these are indeed Project Gutenberg titles, and they sure sound like it,
then the weary academic concern for authoritative texts certainly raises
its head again.  The note below "Yes, it would work for research purposes"
is unlikely to be true.  I conducted a running and ultimately fruitless
argument with Michael Hart, the Project head, in the early 90s, asking him
-- and asking him to declare -- what editions were being used, what the
copy sources were, what steps were being taken to verify correctness in
data entry, and whether and how chapter heads, pagination, publications
data and the like were to be shown.  He steadfastly refused to do or
describe any of this nor to admit the importance of any of it.  Texts like
these are in fact a terrific argument for the usefulness of intelligent
markup a la TEI.

As the texts were provided by large numbers of volunteers and no claims of
editing were ever made, it would be irresponsible to use these texts for
anything other than light reading of the kind one might do when buying a
Wordsworth Publishing or Dover reprint for the beach.

On the other hand, as a curio this offer is hard to resist.... Using
Barschall-like indicators, this is a bargain.

--pg

>===== Original Message From liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu =====
>These are Project Gutenberg titles, which are public domain and freely
>available on the Web. This has been a volunteer effort to put public
>domain titles into electronic form.  This company has taken the titles and
>put them on a CD-ROM--there are other companies taking the same titles and
>reformatting them, then selling them as a product.  These form the basis
>for many ebook libraries.
>
>For the price, the CD-ROM beats downloading each title at a time.  But the
>key is the type of reader--I don't read entire books from my monitor, so
>this doesn't interest me. And I wouldn't print a book.  Yes, it would work
>for research purposes...... Warm regards,
>
>Jean Bedord
>eContent Strategies
>"Profiting from information"
>Phone:  408-257-9221/408-252-5220
>Fax:      408-252-8078

-- 
Peter S. Graham    Syracuse University Library    psgraham@syr.edu
Syracuse, NY 13244-2010 315/443-5530  fax 315/443-2060 NW4.7 11/00