Web Sites Let You Search Classic Literature

By: Charles Bowen One of the cool applications of the Internet that pre-dates -- by a long shot -- the birth of the World Wide Web was Michael Hart's brainchild called "Project Gutenberg." Back in 1971, when the Internet was only a few years old, Hart started collecting famous and important texts and making them freely available to everyone in the world who could get to a computer.

That in itself was no small task at the time, since Hart's vision also pre-dated the personal computer by half a decade. Hart himself was given an operator's account by the folks at the Materials Research Lab at the University of Illinois.

Now, more than 30 years later, Hart has been joined by hundreds of volunteers and today, more than 6,000 books are available for free downloading through the official Project Gutenberg Web Site (http://gutenberg.net). Today Project Gutenberg has been joined by many other sites offering classic literary works free online, from Bartleby.com, which offers thousands of classics of reference, literature, and nonfiction to the Internet Public Library (http://www.ipl.org), with excellent links to online text and searchability by the Dewey Decimal System.

One of the newer online library sites to join the mix is Classic Reader, a site that lets you read and -- more importantly for busy journalists -- keyword-search the text of literary works by authors like Dickens, Tolstoy, and Shakespeare. Launched about three years ago, the material originally was a sub-section of Swishweb.com. At this writing, the collection contains more than 700 books and more than 1,000 short stories by some 200 famous authors. New works are added to the collection regularly, many at the suggestion of readers. Visit the site at http://www.classicreader.com, where a simple introductory screen identifies the seven categories in which it assembles the works. Listed in the upper left corner of the opening page are links to fiction, nonfiction, children, poetry, Shakespeare, short stories, drama, and classical. Also in the left are options that invite you to browse the material by authors or by titles.

Probably of more use to researchers, though, will be the site's search facilities. Located in the center of the site's opening page is a set of data entry boxes that enable you to enter a search word or phrase. From associated drop-down menus, select how you want the words matched ("All," "Any" or "Boolean") and the format ("Long" or "Short" descriptions). The site also lists its latest additions to the resources in a report in the upper right column of the introductory page.

Other considerations for using Classic Reader in your writing and editing:

1. All books reprinted on the site are out-of-copyright, meaning the copyright protection has expired, so you won't find the latest Stephen King or Tom Clancy, but you will find classics from the start of the 20th century and earlier.

2. All books are full, unabridged versions and, since they are in the public domain, can be printed, copied, and used in any way.

3. Looking for other online literary repositories? Click the site's "Resources" link in the left column to reach its summary and links to Project Gutenberg, the Internet Public Library, Bartleby.com, and more.
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