In this issue, Anthony Grafton writes about the libraries of the past, and what they tell us about the books of the future. Here Grafton points to some favorite archives and historical resources.
Many roads lead to the real—and utopian—digital collections that are taking shape across the Web. One might start with the biggest: Google is launching Partners Program and the Library Project; Microsoft has begun Live Search Books Publisher Program; and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France rolls out a colorful guide to its Gallica project. But it’s also worthwhile to stop by some older efforts, such as Project Gutenberg, which offers a vast range of information about collateral projects, e-book readers, and more. At the Internet Archive, you’ll find an eclectic electronic bazaar where you can listen to Phil Lesh or Matisyahu, watch classic Betty Boop cartoons, or read the original manuscript that became “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” The archive also sponsors the Open Library, an idealistic and elegant effort “to get catalog information for every book” in the world, to be compiled on a wiki, with the help of readers.
If you’re reading this on a computer at a major library, you can explore such digital resources as JSTOR, a database that provides thousands of scholarly journal articles in reliable electronic form, as well as Early English Books Online; Eighteenth-Century Collections Online, which takes up where E.E.B.O. leaves off; and Alexander Street Press. Many other accessible Web libraries exist, from the virtual repositories sponsored by great national collections around the world (the Library of Congress just signed on as a partner in the World Digital Library) to more idiosyncratic collections aimed at those with a taste for Thomas Nast’s political cartoons or English music-hall songs. D-Lib magazine reviews digital-library collections, and maintains an archive of its critiques.
Historical documents are also crowding onto the Web, as national archives around the world digitize large parts of their holdings. Historians interested in Spain’s obsessively self-documenting monarchy, for example, can read thousands of documents from the Archive of the Indies and other collections on official Web sites or, in some cases, computers set up at the archives themselves. Nowadays, a historian can create his or her own archive, thanks to the digital camera, and many libraries and archives encourage readers do so. At the British National Archives at Kew, you’ll see ranks of historians clicking away, making sharp digital images that they will study at home. As documents are reproduced in shoals, it becomes harder by the day to discover what’s out there before you duplicate someone else’s effort. One of the best ways to get a handle on the sprawling world of digital sources is through George Mason University’s Center for History and New Media, which was created in 1994 and run for many years by the late Roy Rosenzweig. This site will teach you about doing and using digital history, and lead you to the richest sites on the French Revolution, September 11th, and Jamestown, as well as to a digital re-creation of P. T. Barnum’s American Museum, hosted by the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning, at the City University of New York. It soon becomes clear that the digital world has already become a Land of Cockaigne for scholars—a place where we can lie down and feed ourselves all day without needing to move, and where the main danger is of bursting.
As to what this all means for libraries and readers: the Online Computer Library Center’s prototype WorldMap reveals in detail how few books are in libraries, even in countries like India and Argentina; the country of Borges has one book in public and academic collections for every six inhabitants. The situation emphasizes the need for electronic resources. Google’s simple, fast interface will do much to make its books rapidly accessible, even in poor countries with old computers and uncertain connections.
But many questions remain. Some months ago, I worked with a group of historians, supported by the Centre for History and Economics, at Harvard and King’s College, Cambridge, who are investigating the impact of digital history on libraries and archives around the world. The group’s notes are beginning to appear online. For now, however, the best way to get a sense of how scholars and librarians are struggling to sort the gold of the new projects from the pyrites is to visit some of the blogs run by experts. See, for instance, the historian Robert Townsend’s post “Google Books: What’s Not to Like?,” and the discussion it sparked.
Finally, if you want to have a look at some of the tools that librarians created in the distant, pre-digital past—Eusebius’s “canon tables,” for example, or the sign that would have told you which books were chained to a particular bench in the Vatican Library—you can visit “Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture.” This assemblage of books and manuscripts was exhibited in 1993 at the Library of Congress, and has long since returned to the Vatican Library, which is currently closed for renovation. But you can see images of every item—and of those in many other past shows of books and documents—on the Web. ♦