Summary:
In 1930 avant-garde writer Bob Brown published an essay in the international avant-garde journal transition (edited by Eugene Jolas) calling for a new reading machine to push literature to keep up with the advanced reading practices of a cinema-viewing public and thereby produce the “Revolution of the Word.” In this essay, published a year later in a stand-alone publication, Brown boldly proclaimed

The written word hasn’t kept up with the age. The movies have outmanoeuvered it. We have the talkies, but as yet no Readies. I’m for new methods of reading and writing and I believe the up-to-date reader deserves an eye-ful when he buys something to read. I think the optical end of the written word has been hidden over a bushel too long. I’m out for a bloody revolution of the word (1).

And,

Books are antiquated word containers…. modern word-conveyors are needed now, reading will have to be done by machine (13).

(The Readies [Bad Ems: Roving Eye Press, 1930], UCLA Special Collections).
Following the publication of the essay, Brown published a collection of short works inspired by and supposedly created for the machine. Readies for Bob Brown’s Machine (Cagnes-sur-Mer: Roving Eye Press, 1931) included poems by Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, and Filippo Marinetti. Jerome McGann describes the importance of this anthology to literary history: “When the afterhistory of modernism is written, this collection… will be recognized as a work of signal importance” (Black Riders 89). (more…)

“Information design helps people and organizations achieve understanding through the creation of relevant, clear and memorable information. ‘InfoDesign: Understanding by Design’ is dedicated to the growth and improvement of the information and experience industries through the provision of a centralized online resource that serves all interested audiences. Launched in 2004, the site will continually evolve to meet the needs and desires of its participants. ‘InfoDesign: Understanding by Design’ is a non-profit informational resource.” (from the InfoDesign website.)

Starter Links: InfoDesign

Transliteracies Research Report By Mike Godwin

“The name derives from Doktoro Esperanto, the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof first published the Unua Libro in 1887. Zamenhof’s goal was to create an easy and flexible language as a universal second language to foster peace and international understanding. Although no country has adopted the language officially, it has enjoyed continuous usage by a community estimated at between 100,000 and 2 million speakers. It is estimated that there are more than a thousand native speakers. Today, Esperanto is employed in world travel, correspondence, cultural exchange, conventions, literature, language instruction, television (Internacia Televido) and radio broadcasting. Some state education systems offer elective courses in Esperanto; there is evidence that learning Esperanto is a useful preparation for later language learning.” (from Esperanto on Wikipedia)

Starter Links: Esperanto League for N. America | Esperanto.net

Thinkmap is a unique implementation of a dictionary and thesaurus as an interactive visual display.

“The Visual Thesaurus is a dictionary and thesaurus with an intuitive interface that encourages exploration and learning. Available in both a Desktop Edition and an Online Edition, the Visual Thesaurus is a marvelous way to improve your vocabulary and your understanding of the English language.” (from The Visual Thesaurus Product Overview)

Starter Links: Visual Thesaurus Homepage | Thinkmap (Designers)

MediaWiki is a free software package originally written for Wikipedia but is now run on other projects of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation and many other wikis. (from MediaWiki)

“MediaWiki is a free server-based software, that is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It’s designed to be run on a large server farm for a website that gets millions of hits per day. MediaWiki is an extremely powerful, scaleable software and a feature-rich wiki implementation, that uses PHP to process and display data stored in its MySQL database. Pages use MediaWiki’s wikitext format, so that users without knowledge of XHTML or CSS can edit them easily. When a user submits an edit to a page, MediaWiki writes it to the database, but without deleting the previous versions of the page, thus allowing easy reverts in case of vandalism or spamming. MediaWiki can manage image and multimedia files, too, which are stored in the filesystem. For large wikis with lots of users, MediaWiki supports caching and can be easily coupled with Squid proxy server software.” (from MediaWiki’s “How does MediaWiki Work?”)

MediaWiki should not be confused with Wikimedia: “Wikimedia is the collective name for a group of inter-related projects, including Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikisource, Wikibooks, and others, which aim to use the collaborative power of the Internet, and the wiki concept, to create and share free knowledge of all kinds. Like “Wikipedia”, “Wikimedia” is a trademark, and should not be used for projects which are not officially affiliated. Wikimedia is also used as a shortened form of The Wikimedia Foundation.” (from MediaWiki’s “Names” page)

Starter Links: MediaWiki Homepage | List of Sites that use MediaWiki

Transliteracies Research Report By Mike Godwin

Summary:
First launched in 1996, the Internet Archive is a San Francisco-based, non-profit organization that curates and maintains an accessible, online archive of a vast amount of multimedia objects that have been published on the web since the popularization of the Internet in the mid-nineties.

A self-proclaimed repository of knowledge, the Internet Archive aims to create a reliable database of online works and to give, in essence, the web a stable “memory” that will endure beyond any individual web page’s date of expiration. The Internet Archive additionally seeks to keep this access open and free to the public. While the ten-year-old project remains a work in progress, its continuing development has already raised many intriguing challenges in relation to what some have argued is the transitory and ephemeral nature of online reading sources. (more…)

British Library projects that allows the online user to view items held in the Library’s special collections.

“Turning the Pages is the award-winning interactive program that allows museums and libraries to give members of the public access to precious books while keeping the originals safely under glass. Initially developed by and for the British Library, it is now available as a service for institutions and private collectors around the world.

Turning the Pages allows visitors to virtually ‘turn’ the pages of manuscripts in a realistic way, using touch-screen technology and interactive animation. They can zoom in on the high- quality digitised images and read or listen to notes explaining the beauty and significance of each page. There are other features specific to the individual manuscripts. In a Leonardo da Vinci notebook, for example, a button turns the text round so visitors can read his famous ‘mirror’ handwriting.” (From the Project’s web site.)

Starter Links: Turning the Pages | BBC article on their digitization of Mozart’s diaries as part of the project | BBC article about their digitization of what was to become Alice in Wonderland

Organization devoted to increasing online reading materials.

“The OCKHAM Initiative seeks to promote the development of digital libraries via collaboration between librarians and digital library researchers. By promoting simple, open approaches and standards for digital library tools, services, and content, the gap between digital library development and the adoption of digital library systems by the traditional library community will be bridged.

To this end, the OCKHAM Initiative received a $425K grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a network of services that will improve the deployability of the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) in traditional libraries. This grant will produce the initial OCKHAM Network – a suite of interoperable digital library services for use by traditional libraries.” (From The Ockham Initiative.)

Starter Links: Information from D-Lib | The Ockham Initiative

Rewritable thermal recording material developed by Mitsubishi Paper Mills Limited.

“Unlike other rewritable systems, e.g., transparent-opaque types, Thermo Rewrite uses Leuco dye in a coloring/decoloring process for its imaging (Thermo Rewrite is therefore classified as a Leuco type rewritable material). This primary difference from other rewritable materials allows a high-contrast and high-resolution image. Toughness is also a big advantage of Thermo Rewrite. With the use of an adequate printer set, a print/erase durability of more than one thousand times would be possible. Thanks to these great advantages, Thermo Rewrite is expected to be used not only for card applications but also for various other fields.” (From Mitsubishi Paper Mills Ltd.)

Starter Links: Mitsubishi Paper Mill’s Thermo Rewrite | Wikipedia entry on Leuco Dye

Processing is a java-based image programming language and development environment that strives to be easy for non-programmers to learn, yet powerful enough to utilize the range of java libraries.

“Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and sound. It is used by students, artists, designers, architects, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production. It is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and professional production tool. Processing is developed by artists and designers as an alternative to proprietary software tools in the same domain.” (from Processing.org)

Starter Links: Processing.org | Processing Blogs | ProcessingHacks.com

Edubuntu is a Linux-based operating system that specifically targets young adults and families in an educational context.

”’Ubuntu’ is an ancient African word, meaning ‘humanity to others’. Ubuntu also means ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. The Edubuntu Linux distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to schools, through its customised school environment.

Edubuntu is a complete Linux-based operating system, freely available with community based support. The Edubuntu community is built on the ideas enshrined in the Edubuntu Manifesto: that software should be available free of charge, that software tools should be usable by people in their local language and despite any disabilities, and that people should have the freedom to customise and alter their software in whatever way they see fit. These freedoms make Edubuntu fundamentally different from traditional proprietary software: not only are the tools you need available free of charge, you have the right to modify your software until it works the way you want it to.” (from Edubuntu.org)

Starter Links: Edubuntu.org | Ubuntu.org (the parent project) | Jay Allen’s review: “Is Edubuntu Truly the Operating System for Families?” on BloggingBaby.com

News portal site from Inform Technologies LLC that uses advanced algorithms to sift news, blogs, audio, and video; analyzes them according to structure and relationships through “polytope” mathematical/geometrical relations; and then “channels” the results adaptively (according to evolving “discovery paths”) for particular readers:

“Inform is creating a free online tool that we believe will revolutionize how people read news on the web. We not only provide thousands of news sources, including blogs, video, and audio, in a convenient single interface, we process the news for you, allowing you to get at what you’re interested in more quickly, intelligently, and comprehensively.

Inform’s differentiating technology uses a series of information structuring techniques and natural-language interpretation to auto-categorize and group news stories into thousands of categories, and then shreds the text of the stories to isolate the important elements of each. Once the elements have been identified, you can easily connect and read news on any person, place, organization, topic, industry or product quickly, successfully, and easily right from the article you’re reading, or by utilizing a custom news channel you create, all for free.” (from “About Us” on Inform.com site)

Starter Links: Inform.com | Business Week article discussing Inform.com and related, math-driven information and business technologies (.pdf)

Transliteracies Research Report By Lisa Swanstrom

Online organization devoted to enabling political action and mobilization through Internet activity and communication.

“The MoveOn family of organizations brings real Americans back into the political process. With over 3.3 million members across America — from carpenters to stay-at-home moms to business leaders — we work together to realize the progressive vision of our country’s founders. MoveOn is a service — a way for busy but concerned citizens to find their political voice in a system dominated by big money and big media.

The MoveOn family of organizations is made up of a couple of different pieces. MoveOn.org Civic Action, a 501©(4) nonprofit organization, formerly known just as MoveOn.org, primarily focuses on education and advocacy on important national issues. MoveOn.org Political Action, a federal PAC, formerly known as MoveOn PAC, mobilizes people across the country to fight important battles in Congress and help elect candidates who reflect our values. Both organizations are entirely funded by individuals. ” (from MoveOn.org)

Starter Links: MoveOn.org | “MoveOn Moves Up,” Michelle Goldberg’s article on Salon.com

History and Description of the Mechanics’ Institute

“The Mechanics’ Institute sprang up in 19th century England for the ostensible purpose of imparting upon the working class mechanic knowledge of the sciences, literature, and arts. In actuality, a myriad of purposes shrouded the creation of these institutes, which were ultimately appropriated by the middle class when it became apparent that the working class was not as receptive as had been anticipated. Some scholars conjecture that they were really formed as a means of control and indoctrination of the working class, allowing only as little real knowledge as needed for them to improve as workers, but little else. As the middle class began to move in, the working class retreated to the Institute’s libraries and reading rooms, where they were free to discuss topics that interested them.”

Starter Links or References: “Funding communal culture: opportunism and standardisation of funding for mechanics’ institutes in colonial Victoria,” Donald Barker’s article in The Australian Library Journal | “Culture and Wealth Creation: Mechanics’ Institutes and the Emergence of Political Economy in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain,â€? Ann Firth’s article in the History of Intellectual Culture

Transliteracies Research Report By David Roh

Summary:
The Mechanics’ Institute sprang up in 19th century England for the ostensible purpose of imparting upon the working class mechanic knowledge of the sciences, literature, and arts. In actuality, a myriad of purposes shrouded the creation of these institutes, which were ultimately appropriated by the middle class when it became apparent that the working class was not as receptive as had been anticipated. Some scholars conjecture that they were really formed as a means of control and indoctrination of the working class, allowing only as little real knowledge as needed for them to improve as workers, but little else. As the middle class began to move in, the working class retreated to the Institute’s libraries and reading rooms, where they were free to discuss topics that interested them. One of the unintended consequences of the failed Mechanics’ Institutes was the aiding in the creation of a democratic infrastructure for working class access to printed materials, and despite the Institute’s discouragement, a predilection for popular fiction. In short, despite being borne from a desire to regulate, they were an important precursor to the establishment of public libraries and a liberated mass reading public. (more…)

15th-18th century chidren’s primers made of paper, a transparent sheet of animal horn, and a wood base.

“It may not look like one, but a hornbook is really a book. Paper was pretty expensive once and hornbooks were made so children could learn to read without using a lot of paper. A hornbook was usually a small, wooden paddle with just one sheet of paper glued to it. But because that paper was so expensive, parents and teachers wanted to protect it. So they covered the paper with a very thin piece of cow’s horn. The piece of cow’s horn was so thin, you could see right through it. That’s why these odd books were called ‘hornbooks.’” (From Blackwell’s History of Education Web Site.)

Starter Links: Blackwell’s About the Hornbook | Definition of the Hornbook on Bartleby.com

Reading “generator” that makes use of mySQL and associative linking.

Synapsen, a mySQL-based card system for notes and quotes and biblio-references, automagically connects and thus “generates” readings (once a certain critical mass of entries is achieved). Aristotle already recommended excerpts to serious readers…Here, the old card index that served scholars from Locke and Hegel to Levi-Strauss, Barthes, and Luhmann transitions into the computer. In a simple way, this system attempts to implement the vision articulated by HG Wells, Paul Otlet, Vannevar Bush, Ted Nelson, and Apple Hypercard: it runs a SQL database, it can access data from OPACs, and its main strength is automatic associative linking—something no biblio-software offers yet. It allows manual and automatic cross-referencing; of course it also outputs bibliographies, footnotes, etc. It’s available for Windows, Unix, Mac OS X, and Linux, and contains a comfortable interface for LaTeX users via BiBTeX. To install, you need to have a Java Virtual Machine and mySQL 4.1+ The English version will be available in a few weeks. (from Peter Krapp’s description of the project.)

Starter Links: Synspsen

Extensive project that aims to provide researchers with primary and secondary material in the broad category of medieval and modern thought. This project uses a book-scanning robot to help digitize its material.

“To strengthen Stanford University Library holdings in the field of Western Medieval thought and its influence on modern times. The goal is to digitize on an ongoing basis printed reference works, source collections, and primary and secondary books in the broad area of medieval and modern thought.” (From the project’s web site.)

Starter Links: Medieval and Modern Thought Text Digitization Project | “Robots Digitizing Libraries,” San Francisco Chronicle article about robots used to scan books | “SULAIR Has Robot for Digitizing Books,” SULAIR e-newsletter about scanning robots

Online service that manages access to archives of hundreds of academic journals, across disciplines.

“Coverage of 22,000 journals, 23 million patents, 12,000 conference proceedings, 5,500 Web sites, 5,000 books, 2 million chemical structures, and now scholarly Web content via the Web Citation Index.â€? (from About ISI Web of Knowledge.)

Starter Links: ISI Web of Knowledge

Online resource manages access to archives of hundreds of academic journals, across disciplines.

“JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization with a dual mission to create and maintain a trusted archive of important scholarly journals, and to provide access to these journals as widely as possible. JSTOR offers researchers the ability to retrieve high-resolution, scanned images of journal issues and pages as they were originally designed, printed, and illustrated. Content in JSTOR spans many disciplines. ” (from JSTOR.)

Starter Links: JSTOR

Software program that organizes large lists of citations to help researchers sort the terrain of the literature.

“With this powerful text analysis and visualization software program, you get an intuitive framework for exploring reference collections based on content. RefViz provides an at-a-glance overview and reveals trends and associations in references–now you can retain important references otherwise lost when narrowing a search or skimming a list.â€? (from the Product Info page.)

Starter Links: Refviz

Collaborative online knowledge base that allows readers and users to contribute to and edit its encyclopedic-like entries.

“The content of Wikipedia is free, written collaboratively by people from all around the world. This website is a wiki, which means that anyone with access to an Internet-connected computer can edit entries simply by clicking on the edit this page link. Begun in 2001, Wikipedia has rapidly grown into the largest reference website on the Internet…Because Wikipedia is an ongoing work to which anybody with Internet access can contribute, it differs from a paper-based reference source in some very important ways. In particular, older articles tend to be more comprehensive and balanced, while newer articles may still contain significant misinformation, unencyclopedic content, or vandalism. Users need to be aware of this in order to obtain valid information and avoid misinformation which has been recently added and not yet removed.” (from Wikipedia)

Starter Links: Wikipedia.org | Article about the contraversial use of wikis

Transliteracies Research Report By Kim Knight

Free online matching service. Users of the site define their personalities and those whom they wish to meet through a plethora of traditional and very-non-traditional personality tests. Users can create a profile page, upload photos, define “real friends,” and search for people with similar interests. OKCupid is distinctive because of its emphasis on semi-recreational test-taking and creative test-writing.

“What is OkCupid? It’s a totally free matching service. It’s also extremely accurate, as long as (a) you’re honest, and (b) you know what you want. We don’t claim to evaluate you perfectly, but we do claim to find someone who claims to fulfill your claimed requirements, exactly. We firmly believe that most matching sites are just personals services; their “matching” systems are nonexistent or overly subjective.

While we have a small team here, we all take math (and all that math implies) very seriously. OkCupid is a fun project for us for a variety of reasons, only one of which is the actual content. We aim to be the best matching service on every front: superior technology, better math, better psychology. And of course, it’s free, unlike all the others. ” (from OkCupid.)

Starter Links: OKCupid Homepage | OKCupid Wikipedia Entry

Summary:
The codex form of book — a “sheaf of bound pages”[1] — became prevalent in Europe over the previously popular format of the scroll sometime around the fifth century A.D. In its inception and subsequent technical improvements, the codex revolutionized modern thought to include, among other things, a new understanding of individual and informative portability – through space, likewise through time. Increased efforts at portability of the codex not only directly added to the spread of literacy to different economic classes, but also contributed to changes in the format of writing towards the use of academic research and towards general “user-friendliness.” Notably, such technical developments mirror, or at least relate to recent concerns and trends in personal computing, including but not limited to the size and appearance of computer hardware, the layout and graphic design of web pages, and interface design of computer software. (more…)

This document by Tom Jennings describes a history of ASCII (the American Standard Code for Information Interchange) and its immediate ancestors including FIELDATA, ITA2, Murray’s telegraphy code, Baudot’s telegraphy code, and Morse’s telegraphy code. This history provides a thorough foundation for how ASCII came to be and serves as a basis for understanding electronic communication.

This research isn’t a detailed history of the development of character codes per se, but of the codes themselves and their specific meanings.

http://www.wps.com/projects/codes/

Popular social-networking site serving college students (a second branch of the site was later created to serve high school students):

“Facebook is an online directory that connects people through social networks at schools…. You can use Facebook to:

• Look up people at your school.
• See how people know each other.

• Find people in your classes and groups.” (from Facebook home page)

  Starter Links: Facebook home page

  Transliteracies Research Report By Katrina Kimport

Popular social networking site that spread from its origins in the music/band scene to college, high-school, and even middle-school communities:

“MySpace is an online community that lets you meet your friends’ friends.
Create a private community on MySpace and you can share photos, journals and interests with your growing network of mutual friends! See who knows who, or how you are connected. Find out if you really are six people away from Kevin Bacon.” (from About on MySpace.com)

Starter Links: Transliteracies Research Report By Garnet Hertz

Influential as one of the original social-networking sites:

“Find old classmates and co-workers. Provide an easy way for your friends to find your blog. Share photos with your friends. Never forget your friends’ birthdays or lose their contact information. Check your friend compatibility on any given day using joint horoscopes. See your relationship to any member on Friendster, allowing you to safely meet people through your friends.” (from Overview on Friendster site)

Starter Links: Friendster home page

Second-generation open-tagging system for sharing multimedia, links, files, and blogs in a way that allows users to annotate them as belonging to shareable categories:

“TagWorld is helping build the Social Web by providing a unified set of easy-to-use, web-based services that will let users create and engage in a more meaningful, social experience.
        The Social Web empowers people’s ability to engage in self-expression and communicate and share information with whomever they choose. As the Internet’s influence evolves, a new social phase is emerging that calls for enabling people to place and have access to a broad range of personal information that they wish to place on the web. To support users, TagWorld sees five fundamental components for building out this new social web infrastructure: people, photos, blogs, tags and storage.” (from About on TagWorld site)

Starter Links: TagWorld home page | PC Magazine review

One of the paradigm-setting open-tagging systems that allows users to share links to “favorite” online resources and annotate them as belonging to particular categories of interest:

“del.icio.us is a collection of favorites – yours and everyone else’s. Use del.icio.us to:

• Keep links to your favorite articles, blogs, music, restaurant reviews, and more on del.icio.us and access them from any computer on the web.
• Share favorites with friends, family, and colleagues.

• Discover new things. Everything on del.icio.us is someone’s favorite – they’ve already done the work of finding it. Explore and enjoy.” (from About on del.icio.us site)

  Starter Links: del.icio.us home page

Paradigm-seting open-tagging system for organizing and sharing photos. Though it does not bear directly on the Transliteracies problem of online reading, Flickr is relevant because it helped establish the model for open, shareable metadata—that is, for allowing users to annotate online resources in common:

“Part of the solution is to make the process of organizing photos collaborative. In Flickr, you can give your friends, family, and other contacts permission to organize your photos – not just to add comments, but also notes and tags. People like to ooh and ahh, laugh and cry, make wisecracks when sharing photos. Why not give them the ability to do this when they look at them over the internet? And as all this info accretes around the photos as metadata, you can find them so much easier later on, since all this info is also searchable.” (from About Flickr on Flickr site)

Starter Links: Flickr home page

With the VRD a new technique of Head Mounted Displays evolve that don’t produce a real image on a physical screen any more, but project a virtual image directly onto the retina. They promise on the long run, low costs, light weight and higher resolutions which might make convenient reading possible for the first time in the history of HMDs.

“The VRD was invented at the University of Washington in the Human Interface Technology Lab (HIT) in 1991. The development began in November 1993. The aim was to produce a full color, wide field-of-view, high resolution, high brightness, low cost virtual display. Microvision Inc. has the exclusive license to commercialize the VRD technology. This technology has many potential applications, from head-mounted displays (HMDs) for military/aerospace applications to medical society.

The VRD projects a modulated beam of light (from an electronic source) directly onto the retina of the eye producing a rasterized image. The viewer has the illusion of seeing the source image as if he/she stands two feet away in front of a 14-inch monitor. In reality, the image is on the retina of its eye and not on a screen. The quality of the image he/she sees is excellent with stereo view, full color, wide field of view, no flickering characteristics. Using the VRD technology it is possible to build a display with the following characteristics:

* Very small and lightweight, glasses mountable * Large field of view, greater than 120 degrees * High resolution, approaching that of human vision * Full color with better color resolution than standard displays * Brightness sufficient for outdoor use * Very low power consumption * True stereo display with depth modulation * Capable of fully inclusive or see through display modes” (from the NPS Article)

Starter Links:
Microvision|Product video|NPS Article

With better display quality, more storage space and a very sophisticated web infrastructure to support it, the IPod is growing into a multipurpose device for different kinds of media, that exceeds the original intention of a mp3 player by far.

The IPod video is much more than a mp3 player. In fact, it is a full-sized computer that is even able to have a version of linux installed. With video and audio podcasts there is a new way to handle content transfer of any kind. Furthermore, the IPod can be used as a ebook. With the IPodulator websites can be viewed and several books like for example the bible can be heard and read on the IPod on the go.

Starter Links:
IPodhacks.com|bibleplayer|ipodulator

Transliteracies Research Report By Marc Breisinger

Invention and adoption of the codex book:

The codex form of book — a “sheaf of bound pagesâ€? — became prevalent in Europe over the previously popular format of the scroll sometime around the fifth century A.D. In its inception and subsequent technical improvements, the codex revolutionized modern thought to include, among other things, a new understanding of individual and informative portability — through space, likewise through time. Increased efforts at portability of the codex not only directly added to the spread of literacy to different economic classes, but also contributed to changes in the format of writing towards the use of academic research and towards general “user-friendliness.â€? Notably, such technical developments mirror, or at least relate to recent concerns and trends in personal computing, including but not limited to the size and appearance of computer hardware, the layout and graphic design of web pages, and interface design of computer software.

Starter Links or References: Carter, John. ABC for Book Collectors. Revised by Nicholas Barker. 7th ed. Delaware: Oak Knoll Press, 1995 | Chappell, Warren. A Short History of the Printed Word. Edited by Robert Bringhurst. Vancouver: Hartley & Marks Publishers, Inc., 1999.

Transliteracies Research Report By Robin Chin

Online multimedia library initially devoted to giving the reader access to works of antiquity. Since its inception the project has expanded to include literature of different time periods.

“Perseus is an evolving digital library, engineering interactions through time, space, and language. Our primary goal is to bring a wide range of source materials to as large an audience as possible. We anticipate that greater accessibility to the sources for the study of the humanities will strengthen the quality of questions, lead to new avenues of research, and connect more people through the connection of ideas.” (from the Perseus Digital Library.)

Starter Links: Perseus Digital Library

Online archive of past web sites, including defunct or no longer operable pages. Takes its name from “Peabody’s Improbable History,” a frequent short on The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.

“Browse through 40 billion web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago. To start surfing the Wayback, type in the web address of a site or page where you would like to start, and press enter. Then select from the archived dates available. The resulting pages point to other archived pages at as close a date as possible. Keyword searching is not currently supported.” (from Archive.org.)

Starter Links: Internet Archive |

Transliteracies Research Report By Lisa Swanstrom

Service that aids scholars in the organization of academic reading materials online.

“CiteULike is a free service to help academics to share, store, and organise the academic papers they are reading. When you see a paper on the web that interests you, you can click one button and have it added to your personal library. CiteULike automatically extracts the citation details, so there’s no need to type them in yourself. It all works from within your web browser. There’s no need to install any special software.

Because your library is stored on the server, you can access it from any computer. You can share your library with others, and find out who is reading the same papers as you. In turn, this can help you discover literature which is relevant to your field but you may not have known about. ” (from CiteULike.)

Starter Links: CiteULike

Learning tool that uses voice-recognition technology to assist the student with reading aloud.

“Research shows that reading aloud to a supportive listener is one of the best ways for children to develop fluency. Soliloquy Reading Assistant provides kids with this guided oral reading experience, using the computer as the supportive listener. We deploy cutting-edge speech recognition technology and research-validated intervention to help students master a text and allow them–and their parents and teachers–to chart their progress. The result is a fun, interactive experience for kids and a comprehensive real-time assessment tool for teachers.” (from Soliloquy Reading Assistant.)

Starter Links: Soliloquy Reading Assistant | project description from next/text

Online resource out of Brown University for reading Boccaccio’s Decamaron. Includes links, maps, and other digital supplements.

“The site can serve as a primer for newcomers to the Decameron, with useful sections on Boccaccio’s period and literary influences, and profiles of major characters and themes. A more advanced scholar can take advantage of complete, searchable texts in Italian and English, period music recordings, an extensive critical bibliography, and analytical tools such as a motif index and a concordance. The “pedagogy” section provides resources that teachers and students can use in their courses – reading guides, sample papers, course modules, and a variety of articles on the meaningful use of technology in the classroom.” (from next/text.)

Starter Links: Decamaron Web | Project description from next/text

New reading inteface which reconfigers the page into a landscape of interlinking information.

“The page itself, one of the most fundamental components of the book, is undergoing a material and conceptual transformation as the static, flat, delimited space of the paper page gives way to the animated, interactive, unlimited, deep space of the digital book. “Hypermedia Berlin”–which grew out of a collaboration between the Stanford Humanities Laboratory (SHL) and UCLA’s Center for Digital Humanities (CDH)–represents an excellent example of the formal innovation made possible by digital media. This project crafts an entirely new kind of page out of a gallery of highly detailed, interlinked, illustrated and annotated map interfaces, which can be navigated with an easy-to-use zoom feature. In other words, the page itself has been re-oriented to “landscape.” This alternative book form organizes its content topographically and chronologically; encouraging readers to interact with and consider its subject differently. History, the map interface tells us, is tied as strongly to place as it is to time.

Presently, the site offers 25 navigable maps, “each map, corresponding to a key date in Berlin’s nearly 800 hundred year history, consists of an array of virtual reality “hotspots,” popup information screens, and critical essays documenting and analyzing significant regions, architectural structures, events, people, and cultural products from that moment in Berlin’s history.” Using the zoom function, students and scholars can study the maps in detail. The overlay function, which makes maps semi-transparent so that one can be placed on top of the other, allows the reader to analyze changes in Berlin’s landscape.” (from next/text)

Starter Links: project description on next/text