ELECTRONIC LIBRARIES OF THE FUTURE
        
              Imagine, you're sitting at your computer one fine day, and
        you decide to do some research on the United States.  You load a
        computerized map of the USA into memory.  While looking at it,
        you decide to focus on the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.  You
        move the cursor to the keystone symbol and press a key. 
        Instantly, the Pennsylvania map expands to fill the screen.
              As you look at it, there are colored symbols on the screen. 
        Pressing the cursor on any one of them fills the screen with more
        information about cities in the Commonwealth.  Statistics,
        history, population, and more are available by pressing another
        key.  You also can cut and paste information from the screen to a
        file for your own use.  
              Sounds far-fetched doesn't it?  Well, interactive programs,
        and especially, hypertext, or electronic publishing programs are
        beginning to fill the libraries of the 21st Century.
              Hypertext, or electronic publishing, is a new way to manage
        information.  It blends text with graphics and other media
        presentations to provide the reader with a learning experience
        that involves sight, sound, and touch.
              The whole notion of hypertext was first conceived by Vanevar
        Bush, President Franklin Roosevelt's Science Advisor, in 1945. 
        His term for it was Memex.  As he envisioned it, Memex would aid
        a researcher or writer to pull together diverse information from
        a variety of sources.  Not knowing about digital computers, he
        pictured it as being run by photocells and microfilm.
              The actual term, hypertext, was coined in the mid sixties by
        a technical visionary named Ted Nelson.  His vision was to
        seamlessly bind together all of man's knowledge into one linked
        framework where everything is connected to everything else.  
              The Xanadu Project was Nelson's goal of computerizing
        everything and binding it together.  It was named for "the magic
        place of literary memory" in Samuel Coleridge's poem, "Kubla
        Khan."
              While many people were first skeptical about Nelson's
        project succeeding, the recent emphasis on the Information
        Superhighway, which is part of V.P. Al Gore's mission to make
        information accessible to all people in the nation, certainly
        confirms Nelson's visionary stance.
              This past weekend, I compiled three electronic publications
        which are all book length.  I used a hypertext software package
        called, Writer's Dream.  I placed the separate chapters into the
        program's compiler and within moments, the book became an
        electronic publication.
              The first book took about a day and a half to finish because
        I made a lot of mistakes in formatting my original text.  The
        second one required about an hour and a half.  The third one was
        done in less than thirty minutes.               Now, you might ask, what
        is the advantage of using electronic publications as opposed to
        regular pulp publishing?  Let me tell you just a few.
              Electronic books don't burn.  They can be readily copied
        from disk to disk and sent out on the electronic superhighway and
        shared with millions of readers without any publishers, agents,
        critics, and others getting in the middle of the dissemination of
        information.
              Electronic publication is the means to liberation.  Once
        upon a time, only the wealthy or those connected with the church
        were able to get books published.  With electronic technology,
        any person who can type and read and write can now contribute to
        the body of human knowledge.
              "Write it and they will read."  How many times in your life
        did you get a notion about something that you wanted to share
        with others and stopped because you weren't sure what it would
        take to get the work published?  It could simply be a poem, an
        essay, but you were sure that their lives would be affected?  Now
        you possess the means to do it.
              Electronic publishing requires no trees.  There is no
        environmental waste.  Ever notice how many yard sales contain
        boxes of books being sold for less than a dime a piece because
        they are no longer wanted.  For a moment they provided the owner
        a chance to escape into some far off land and leave the banal
        behind.  Now these very same books will eventually end up in some
        moldy closet or be burned because they are not wanted.  With
        electronic publications, when the owner no longer wants to the
        text, he or she simply deletes it to make room for the next new
        and exciting offering on the electronic library network.
              When possible, older terms like "books on disk" or
        "hypertext" are being replaced with the term, "electronic
        publishing."  One major effort being conducted now at the
        University of Chicago is "Project Gutenberg."  Beginning with the
        electronic publication of the Bible, members of this project are
        planning to take all literary works in the English language that
        are in public domain and convert them into electronic
        publications.  
              I now have the Bible, all of Shakespeare's plays, and famous
        short stories like Washington Irving's, "The Legend of Sleepy
        Hollow," and O. Henry's, "Gift of the Magi" on disk.  There are
        so many out there right now, that I could spend every night
        downloading them from the electronic libraries that are springing
        up everywhere.
              Some of the categories that are available now include
        electronic magazines and newsletters, reference materials,
        gospels, non-fiction and fiction works, and a host of other
        technical journals and manuals.  
              What about copyright law and the potential for violations? 
        Under the Copyright Law of 1909, anything created needed to be
        copyrighted first before it was actually protected.  Now, the
        instant the work is "created" it is copyrighted.  There is a
        potential for people to "steal" other peoples' work. However, in
        the shareware world of the 21st Century, I imagine that people
        who create something would rather have others read and use the
        essay, poem, technical manual, or fiction novel rather than let
        it gather dust on the shelf.  
              Most of the works I downloaded from computer bulletin
        boards, Compuserve, and from the Internet libraries on-line are
        shareware.  This means that I can use them and keep them if I
        like them and find them useful.  I am requested then to send a
        nominal sum to the author or publisher for a registered version
        of the product.  Many of the electronic publications are
        available for as little as $2.00.  Now that's a real bargain and
        I'm sure Alex Badenoch would be happy with such a deal.
              I'm sure regular pulp publishing will continue well into the
        next century.  Sometimes a solid reference book is necessary for
        certain tasks.  In reality, electronic publications are just a
        keystroke away from being hard copy.  If you want to touch the
        publication, all you need to do is send the file to your printer. 
              Anyone interested in electronic publication and would like
        to read more about electronic publishing, and some of the texts
        that I have can give me a call at 927-5640 and I'll be glad to
        share what I have with you.
              See you soon at the Electronic Library...