The Digital Library Programme will begin in February 1999. The two potential partners are: Dawson-IBM-The Stationery Office Consortium, and the Digital Library Consortium (Blackwell, Chadwyck-Healey, MicroPatent, Unisys). The confirmation of the preferred bidder is planned for February 1999, and the contract will be awarded in Spring 1999.
"The development of the Digital Library will enable the British Library to embrace the digital information age. Digital technology will be used to preserve and extend the Library's unparalleled collection. Access to the collection will become boundless with users from all over the world, at any time, having simple, fast access to digitized materials using computer networks, particularly the Internet."
What exactly is digitization? Digitization is the conversion of text, sound or images to digital form, that is, in the form of numerical digits (bits and bytes) for handling by computer. Digitization has made it possible to create, record, manipulate, combine, store, retrieve and transmit information and information-based products in ways which magnetic tape, celluloid and paper did not permit. Digitization thus allows music, cinema and the written word to be recorded and transformed through similar processes and without separate material supports. Previously dissimilar industries, such as publishing and sound recording, now both produce CD-ROMs, rather than simply books and records.
7.2. Digital Libraries: Some Examples
Created by Michael S. Hart in 1971, the Project Gutenberg was the first information provider on the Internet. It is now the oldest digital library on the Web, and the biggest in terms of the number of works (1,500) which have been digitized for it, with around 45 new titles per month. Michael Hart's purpose is to put on the Web as many literary texts as possible for a minimal price.
In his e-mail of August 23, 1998, Michael Hart explained:
"We consider Etext to be a new medium, with no real relationship to paper, other than presenting the same material, but I don't see how paper can possibly compete once people each find their own comfortable way to Etexts, especially in schools. […] My own personal goal is to put 10,000 Etexts on the Net, and if I can get some major support, I would like to expand that to 1,000,000 and to also expand our potential audience for the average Etext from 1.x% of the world population to over 10%… thus changing our goal from giving away 1,000,000,000,000 Etexts to 1,000 time as many… a trillion and a quadrillion in US terminology."
The Etext # 1000 was Dante's Divine Comedy, in both English and Italian, and Michael Hart dreams about Etext # 2000 for January 1st, 2000. In the Project Gutenberg Newsletter of February 1998, he wrote: "If we do 36 per month for the next 23 month period, we should be able to reach 2,000 Etexts by January 1 of the year 2000. . . […] I think it would be kind of nice to do our 2,000th Etext during the big celebration…"
An average of 50 hours is necessary to get any Etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright-searched, analyzed, etc.
How did Project Gutenberg begin?