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Gutenberg Project ftp uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu/pub/etext/gutenberg/etext95 http://jg.cso.uiuc.edu/pg_home.html
This site has added an extraordinary amount of new material. Michael Hart and his team of volunteers have been making electronic texts available to the public for years; and the pace of their work appears to be accelerating. If you are interested in etexts at all, you must check out this site. And if you are in a position to donate time and/or money, please do so. They need and deserve your help.
This directory contains several texts from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries edited by Richard Bear, along with a book of poems, Desire for the Land by Richard Bear.
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
From jgill@mother.esu1.k12.ne.us Sat Jan 14 19:15:40 1995
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 1995 18:05:39 -0600 (CST)
From: Janet Gill <jgill@mother.esu1.k12.ne.us>
To: B+R Samizdat Express <samizdat@world.std.com>
Subject: Re: PLEASE COPY THIS DISK
The Bloomfield Community Schools, in rural Nebraska, has a network of 75 computers. Students can access the files that have been placed in the information directory from any one of thse computers anywhere in the building. The files are flagged "read only" and "sharable" so that students may copy the information for their use but they cannot change the original form.
The 1994 World Fact Book is used by the Social Studies Department in their study of Geography. Students can look up current information on the countries they are studying and do reports, speeches etc. Both teachers and students have easy access to the material.
The 1995 United States Budget Overview is also used by the Social Studies Department. Students are assigned portions of the budget to examine.
The English teacher is just beginning to use electronic texts.
Teachers use the electronic texts to gather teaching information. They are introduced to the vast resources available on the Internet.
The students gain experience in word processing, gathering, manipulating, and searching large amounts of data. They have access to current information at their convenience. The school district is able to provide current information at a reasonable cost, and address environmental concerns. Teachers are able to individualize instruction to meet the needs of the learners.
I think electronic texts are able to provide a win, win environment for educators, school districts and students.
Janet Gill, Media specialist
Bloomfield Community Schools
311 East Benton Box 308
Bloomfield, NE 68718
jgill@mother.esu1.k12.ne.us
From rich@udlapvms.pue.udlap.mx Sat Jan 14 19:15:23 1995
Date: Tue, 3 Jan 1995 16:14:37 -0600 (CST)
From: Paul Rich <rich@udlapvms.pue.udlap.mx>
To: B+R Samizdat Express <samizdat@world.std.com>
Cc: Paul Rich <rich@udlapvms.pue.udlap.mx>
Subject: Re: new disks available
There are now more than 400 universities in Mexico, with a total studentbody of more than 2 million. The resources for most of these institutions are extremely limited. The largest libraries are small by American standards. Now that the peso has been drastically devalued, the opportunity to create reference collections is even less.
So the creation of electronic libraries has become a must if there is going to be any credibility to degree programs. At the University of the Americas in Puebla we have started an electronic collection which, as time and resources permit, we intended to vastly expand. It seems to us that this is the only real option for Latin American higher education. It is an example of what the Internet can do for developing countries: the per student cost is a fraciton of what it would be with a conventional library.
Paul Rich rich@rico.pue.udlap.mx
University of the Americas-Puebla
Sta. Catarina Martir A.P. 100
Cholula Puebla 72820
Mexico
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 1994 09:04:13 +0001 (EST)
From: Arthur L Keenan <tjk@world.std.com>
To: B+R Samizdat Express <samizdat@world.std.com>
Subject: Lynx from a Blind User
I use Lynx on a regular basis. I have encountered my share of graphical images and icons, but they haven't made it imposible to navigate the web. I didn't know about that -show_cursor command. That will be very helpful, as my speech software would always read the line the cursor was on, which was always the line with H)Help O)options etc, and it was very annoyinh. I too wish they made it able to play audioclips directly instead of having to download them first.
The Internet which has captured everyone's imagination over the last year is an anomaly.
The World Wide Web and point-and-click browsers are so easy to use that even people who normally shy away from PCs take to this new environment immediately.
But while the Internet traditionally was extremely interactive -- every user potentially interacting with every other user through mail and newsgroups and chat and other utilities -- the first users of the Web simply retrieved information, not interacting with anyone at all.
With the addition of forms capability, you can now interact with the information provider -- asking questions, commenting in brief, and even placing orders. But there is still none of the collaborative interaction among users that in the past was the life and excitement of the Internet.
Yes, a controlled, direct, one-to-one connection between a company and a potential customer fits the traditional model of a business. And companies coming onto the Internet over this time have been trying to extend their traditional operating modes, with metaphors of electronic storefronts and electronic malls.
But this is just a transitional phase. Collaboration and group interaction can be extremely powerful on a global scale, and those capabilities will be coming very soon to the World Wide Web -- first as adaptations of older Internet capabilities (like newsgroups) and transplants of other networking tools (like notes files).
These new collaborative tools will make it far easier to create not just repositories of multi-media information, but rather true communities of common interest, where people congregate to share their experiences and insights, as well as to learn and to shop. These tools, combined with intelligent search capabilities, will open new business opportunities. Open villages or communities on the Internet will welcome all, and build and maintain audience loyalty for the benefit of related businesses as well as the users themselves. And businesses will be able to form closed and temporary communities, making it easy for small dispersed groups to work closely together as teams for the duration of a project; also enabling the quick formation and smooth running of virtual companies.
We hear a lot today about "interactive television." Compared to the Internet, that's a misnomer.
When television people talk about interactivity they mean giving the individual the ability to say yes or no, the ability to choose a particular product and pay for it on-line, and the ability to make local changes within the broad framework of a game or other entertainment product. In their model, a small number of mega-companies provide the information, the entertainment, and the choices for a large number of consumers.
With the Internet, anyone can be a publisher/broadcaster. At the simplest level, using email to distribute an electronic newsletter (like this one) or contributing to a newsgroup, you can reach thousands or tens of thousands of people at little or no cost. Then you can benefit from the responses of those who choose to react, and the reactions to those reactions, in threads of thought and discussion and debate that may range far from the original proposition, or may provide totally unexpected insights.
At the individual level, the Internet promotes the free exchange of ideas and grass-roots democracy. Anyone of any age or gender or race or nationality or wealth can have a say, and ideas can clash and develop based on their merit.
At the business level, the Internet promotes the free exchange of products and services. Any company, regardless of its age or size or location or wealth can bring its wares to the marketplace where they compete freely and on an equal basis with the oldest and largest and wealthiest.
Over the next year, with the spread of Internet capabilities to the home and as collaborative tools become available for the Web, the Internet could act as a social and political catalyst as well as a communication medium.
Already the Internet is playing an important role in government. Large amounts of useful information are being made available to the public at no cost. Much of this information was previously expensive and difficult to get hold of; now everyone with access to the Internet can get right to the source, and do original research, without having to depend on the mass media, and can then publish the results and open discussion on the Internet, once again without having to catch the attention of the mass media.
In the last few months, the White House and House of Representatives Web servers came on line, with mechanisms for feedback and clear and simple mechanisms for navigating through the vast amounts of Federal government information that is available on line. And, as a public service and also as a demonstration of the capabilities of the Web, Digital Equipment put the California election on-line -- providing detailed information about all the candidates, including those from the smallest of parties on an equal footing with the two major parties.
The Internet makes it virtually impossible to control the flow of information and hence played a role in the collapse of Cold War dictatorships. Now it can help spread true participative and informed, town-meeting-style democracy in countries like the U.S. that have called themselves democracies for many years.
And at the same time, on the commercial side, it can foster foster free trade of goods and services and open competition on a global scale.
Published by Samizdat Express, 213 Deerfield Lane, Orange, CT 06477. (203) 553-9925. seltzer@samizdat.com
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