= [Overview]
Founded in 1993 by John Mark Ockerbloom while he was a student
at Carnegie Mellon University (in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania),
The Online Books Page is "a website that facilitates access to
books that are freely readable over the internet. It also aims
to encourage the development of such online books, for the
benefit and edification of all." John Mark first maintained
this page on the website of the School of Computer Science of
Carnegie Mellon University. In 1999, he moved it to its present
location at the University of Pennsylvania Library, where he is
a digital library planner and researcher. The Online Books Page
offered links to 12,000 books in 1999, 20,000 books in 2003
(including 4,000 books published by women), 25,000 books in
2006, and 30,000 books in 2008. The books "have been authored,
placed online, and hosted by a wide variety of individuals and
groups throughout the world", with 7,000 books from Project
Gutenberg. The FAQ also gives copyright information about most
countries in the world with links to further reading.
= [In Depth]
In 1993, the web was still in its infancy, with Mosaic as its
first browser. John Mark Ockerbloom was a graduate student at
the School of Computer Science (CS) of Carnegie Mellon
University (CMU, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania). He created The
Online Books Page as "a website that facilitates access to
books that are freely readable over the internet. It also aims
to encourage the development of such online books, for the
benefit and edification of all." (excerpt from the website)
In September 1998, John Mark wrote in an email interview: "I
was the original webmaster here at CMU CS, and started our
local web in 1993. The local web included pages pointing to
various locally developed resources, and originally The Online
Books Page was just one of these pages, containing pointers to
some books put online by some of the people in our department.
(Robert Stockton had made web versions of some of Project
Gutenberg's texts.) After a while, people started asking about
books at other sites, and I noticed that a number of sites (not
just Gutenberg, but also Wiretap and some other places) had
books online, and that it would be useful to have some listing
of all of them, so that you could go to one place to download
or view books from all over the net. So that's how my index got
started. I eventually gave up the webmaster job in 1996, but
kept The Online Books Page, since by then I'd gotten very
interested in the great potential the net had for making
literature available to a wide audience. At this point there
are so many books going online that I have a hard time keeping
up (and in fact have a large backlog of books to list). But I
hope to keep up my online books works in some form or another.
I am very excited about the potential of the internet as a mass
communication medium in the coming years. I'd also like to stay
involved, one way or another, in making books available to a
wide audience for free via the net, whether I make this
explicitly part of my professional career, or whether I just do
it as a spare-time volunteer."
In 1998, there was an index of 7,000 etexts that could be
browsed by author, title or subject. There were also pointers
to significant directories and archives of online texts, and to
special exhibits. From the main search page, users could search
in four types of media: books, music, art, and video.
"Along with books, The Online Books Page is also now listing
major archives of serials (such as magazines, published
journals, and newspapers) (...). Serials can be at least as
important as books in library research. Serials are often the
first places that new research and scholarship appear. They are
sources for firsthand accounts of contemporary events and
commentary. They are also often the first (and sometimes the
only) place that quality literature appears. (For those who
might still quibble about serials being listed on a 'books
page', back issues of serials are often bound and reissued as
hardbound 'books'.)" (excerpt from the 1998 website)
In 1999, after graduating from Carnegie Mellon with a Ph.D. in
computer science, John Mark moved to work as a digital library
planner and researcher at the University of Pennsylvania
Library. He also moved The Online Books Page there, kept it as
clear and simple, and went on expanding it.
The Online Books Page offered links to 12,000 ebooks in 1999,
20,000 ebooks in 2003 (including 4,000 ebooks published by
women), 25,000 ebooks in 2006, and 30,000 ebooks in 2008. The
books "have been authored, placed online, and hosted by a wide
variety of individuals and groups throughout the world", with
7,000 books from Project Gutenberg. The FAQ lists copyright
information about most countries in the world, with links to
further reading.