INTERNET-ON-A-DISK #3, May 1994

The newsletter of electronic texts and Internet trends.

edited by Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com, www.samizdat.com


Permission is granted to freely distribute this newsletter in electronic form for non-commercial use. All other rights reserved.

Send your comments, letters to the editor, and related articles to seltzer@samizdat.com For information on who we are check www.samizdat.com/who.html

To access other issues, go to www.samizdat.com/ioad.html. The full text of all issues is available for free, with hypertext links to the sites referenced. (Please keep in mind that URLs frequently change. We will attempt to update the information in this on-line edition, but don't expect perfection.)

For plain-text books on CD ROM, a library for the price of a book, visit our online store at http://store.yahoo.com/samizdat

You can now receive Internet-on-a-Disk by email, by signing up at Yahoo Groups. Either send email to subscribe-ioad@yahoogroups.com , or register at the Web site http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ioad. You can also use that group to discuss related matters and share insights with other readers and with me (Richard Seltzer seltzer@samizdat.com).

WHAT'S NEW

(texts recently made available by ftp, gopher and LISTSERV)

Gutenberg Project ftp uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu/pub/etext/gutenberg/etext94 http://jg.cso.uiuc.edu/pg_home.html

U.S. Dept. of Education ftp ftp.ed.gov gopher gopher.ed.gov http://www.ed.gov NATO LISTSERV@CC1.KULEUVEN.AC.BE gopher stc.nato.int

All the latest information from NATO and related organizations -- including the military and political activity related to Bosnia -- has been available by LISTSERV and now is also on gopher. The gopher server is complete, well-organized and easy to use. In addition to NATO, it includes the North Atlantic Assembly (NAA), the Western European Union "(WEU), the Assembly of Western European Union (A-WEU), the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), and Le Corps Europeen. It will soon include the Council of Europe (CofE) as well. Plenary Sessions of the Assembly of Western European Union are in French, as are the documents from Le Corps Europeen. The rest of the material is in English only for now. From this gopher, you can also easily reach a number of other interesting sites that you might otherwise not have known existed. Found under "Other International/Strategic Affairs", these include:

Helsinki City Library in Finland http://www.kaapeli.fi/maailma/kalevala/kalevala.html ftp nic.funet.fi /pub/doc/literary/etext/Finnish Project Runeberg http://www.lysator.liu.se/runeberg.html gopher gopher.lysator.liu.se 70 ftp ftp.lysator.liu.se /pub/runeberg

The explanatory material here is in English, but the texts themselves are in Scandinavian languages (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese). The Scandinavian texts are not in ASCII, since that code cannot represent all the letters of the alphabet used in these languages. Instead, the texts are offered in a variety of extended, standard character sets. The current offerings include the Bible in Swedish, a list of Scandinavian Authors, Translators and Artists compiled by Lars Aronsson, who runs the Project; as well as numerous novels, plays, and poems.

Spunk Press ftp etext.archive.umich.edu (141.211.164.18) /pub/Politics/Spunk/texts/@writers

LANDMARKS

ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS ON THE WORLDWIDE WEB

Check out the home pages and creations of students at the following schools: In particular, check the research reports written by sixth graders at Hillside, which include hypertext links to the sources they cite. Also, take a look at the illustrated Spanish counting (1-10) booklet put together by kindergartners at Buckman.

PERU (IN SPANISH) ON THE WORLDWIDE WEB

La Red Cientifica Peruana, a non-profit organization in Peru, connected that country to the NSF backbone in February and now has a Worldwide Web server. This looks like it's the first Web server in South America. Nearly all the material is in Spanish -- which makes this a useful resources for teachers of that language. http://www.rcp.net.pe/rcp.html gopher gopher.rcp.net.pe

SUGGESTION -- PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD

While very few K-12 schools have good Internet connections, nearly all have PCs or Macintoshes. And one of the best ways to introduce them to the treasures of the Internet is by providing them with electronic texts on disks. (That's a lot easier and cheaper than giving them printouts.)

For those who do not have the capability or the time to retrieve electronic texts from the Internet, many are available at a nominal price from PLEASE COPY THIS DISK, a project of The Samizdat Express. For further information, send email to samizdat@samizdat.com

AN AUTHOR'S VIEW OF ELECTRONIC RIGHTS & THE PUBLIC DOMAIN

by Richard Seltzer, The Samizdat Express
Twenty years ago, when the small press movement was gaining momentum, my wife and I started a little company to publish a children's book I had written -- The Lizard of Oz. Offset printing had become so inexpensive that anyone could be a publisher. You no longer needed the blessing of an established publishing house to bring your words to the public. There were book fairs everywhere, and a spirit of camaraderie and sharing prevailed among beginners like us. Everything seemed possible.

The world would be transformed.

Gradually, we woke up to the fact that while it was easy and inexpensive to put words onto paper, distribution was slow, expensive, and inefficient. Even with good reviews (the media were actually looking for small press material to review), it was very difficult to get books into stores. And even if you did get them into stores, they didn't stay on the shelves for long.

That's the way the business was set up -- they have to make room for the latest offerings, and there is only limited space. And with that system, the price of books is designed to pay for all the copies that will be returned by the stores and remaindered or shredded.

So instead of manuscripts gathering dust in writers' drawers, boxes of printed books gathered dust in their closets.

Now we are experiencing the same kind of excitement and sharing with the Internet. Only this time the information is in electronic form. That means that not only can anyone publish, but the means of distribution are available to everyone as well.

The main barrier to writers using this means to deliver their work to the public are psychological.

Often we presume that while the score and the players change, the rules of the game remain the same. But we are now at a turning point in the history of publishing. With the proliferation of electronic texts, old rules do not necessarily apply and new ones have not been established. The choices that authors make today can help establish what will be common practice for many years to come.

Traditional publishers are waking up and beginning to include "electronic rights" in their contracts and are trying to get their authors to sign over electronic rights for previously published works. Authors should think very carefully before signing such documents, should consider the other options and their implications.

Step back. Why do you write? -- to be read.

Yes, you would like to be paid for your work, though you realize that is likely to be more symbolic than substantial -- an indication that your work is valued and accepted by the establishment. (Very few writers receive significant sums for their work). But, most likely, your primary motivation is to share your thoughts and creations with others.

Why does a traditional company publish your work? -- to make money.

They invest in your work because they expect to get a return, whether from the marketplace or from grant money. Even university presses will not keep a book in print if they cannot make a profit from it.

In cyberspace, an electronic book can stay in print indefinitely, at practically no cost. As long as the work exists at one public site on the Internet, it remains available to everyone who is interested, everywhere in the world.

And electronic texts on diskettes can be quickly and inexpensively copied for colleagues and students.

This means authors can keep their works alive either by placing them in the public domain or by retaining copyright, but making them freely available in electronic form.

Examples:

By all indications, this parallel approach actually increases sales of traditional print editions by making the work more widely known.

When authors put their work in the public domain or retain electronic rights and make their work freely available in electronic form, the public gains access to their work for the indefinite future, and the authors win new readers.

So if a publisher offers you a contract that includes electronic rights, think before you sign. You may want to join the electronic revolution.


Published by Samizdat Express, 213 Deerfield Lane, Orange, CT 06477. (203) 553-9925. seltzer@samizdat.com

My Internet: a Personal View of Internet Business Opportunities by Richard Seltzer, on CD, includes four books, 162 articles, and 49 newsletter issues that will inspire you and provide the practical information you need to build your own personal Web site or Internet-based business, helping you to become a player in this new business environment.

Web Business Boot Camp: Hands-on Internet lessons for manager, entrepreneurs, and professionals by Richard Seltzer (Wiley, 2002). No-nonsense guide targets activities that anyone can perform to achieve online business
success. Reviews.

A library for the price of a book.

Return to Internet-on-a-Disk
Go to Readers' Room and Writers' Showcase
Return to Samizdat Express

<