A few books

We enter our fifth century by looking at some books – tens of thousands of them, in fact.

The billion dollar book store.

The story behind Project Gutenberg is extraordinary. A chap called Michael Hart was given, in 1971, a billion dollars’ worth of computing time by some people at the University of Illinois. It seems that, at that time, there was more computing capacity than they knew what to do with. Michael decided that the best way to use his gift was to digitise and store as many books as possible, and then make them available to anyone in the world. Free.

The result is that, if you want to find an out-of-copyright book, to read on screen, print off or download to a reading device, Project Gutenberg should be an early port of call. The index, in very small type, prints out at 942 pages (I used Print Preview – I didn’t actually print it!). They’ve got novels galore, but also travel books, scientific works, biography… every sort of book you can imagine or need, in fact.

The search function is a bit cranky, but with a little patience you can find your chosen work, which may be unobtainable, or only obtainable at a very high price, in printed form. Anyway, if you only want to consult a few paragraphs of a book on old telescopes, for instance, you don’t want the hassle of finding it, borrowing or buying it.

I see they’re soliciting donations. So if you’ve got another billion dollars’ worth of computing time to spare, look no further.

(From the Gateway to websites, select "Books". Project Gutenberg is under "Online books".)

"Please sir, I want some more."

From reading about Project Gutenberg, you might get the impression that no other repository for online books was necessary, but others obviously disagree. There are several such projects about, but we’ve selected for the Gateway The Online Books Page and The Bartleby Archives. The first of these acts as an index to other repositories (including Gutenberg), while Bartleby is essentially a reference library, with in-copyright as well as out-of-copyright material.

My brief descriptions can’t do justice to these huge resources. They all repay a little quiet exploration, so launch yourself on a literary voyage of discovery!

(From the Gateway to websites, select "Books". The Online Books Page and The Bartleby Archives are under "Online books".)

In town tonight

The email version of the Treasure Hunt is 400 issues old, but I've spared bloggers the self-congratulatory stuff. Here is the meat of the thing: some useful sites for checking out the London arts scene.

Hit the trail

Several of the websites included in the Gateway’s "London" section are duplicates of entries elsewhere, or London-specific pages from websites in other categories. You will find the 24 Hour Museum in "Art & design", but in "London" you will find that we’ve extracted the City Heritage Guide.

Since we first put this page on the Gateway, it has got a bit cluttered and messy (mind that glasshouse window!), but it’s worth taking a few minutes to look round, because there are lots of free goodies on offer.

There’s lots of "what’s on, what’s new" content, plenty to occupy a visitor on a long weekend in the smoke, or excite the most cynical long-term resident. And there are some good schemes to get us off our bottoms and into the streets of London (sorry, a Ralph McTell moment there – it won’t happen again).

I liked the podcast, one of three new ones, called "World City Trail". Apart from some really irritating music to start with, it’s a skilful word picture of London’s cultures, characters and cliques. Not so much an iPod guide, I thought, more an encouraging listen before you set out.

There’s stuff for kids, stuff for highbrows and lowbrows… if there’s not something for everyone it must be pretty close. There’s even one of those instant voting boxes where you can vote to demolish the Diana fountain (I did). Heartily recommended.

(From the Gateway to websites, select "London". City Heritage Guide is under "Arts & performance".)

Lots to see

theSeer is "the free online directory and resource for all of London’s creative individuals, organisations, venues, commissioners and bookers to find, receive and promote arts and creative information in London." Supported by Westminster’s own arts team, it has become a rather impressive source of arts information.

You can use it for serious research – if you are trying to find a particular sort of arts practitioner, for example – but you can also just dip in and sample the current scene. The "what’s on" headlines on the left of the home page give you a good idea of the range of arts events taking place or coming up.

There is an advanced search, which you can use to home in by date, artform or venue. I looked for exhibitions taking place on 10 October (I have a visitor that weekend who will need entertaining) and I was frankly gobsmacked at the number of shows we can catch. We’ll struggle to find the time to eat – although, knowing us, we’ll find a way!

(From the Gateway to websites, select "London". theSeer is under "Arts & performance".)

Pic: Hilary Gribbins

A tour round our newsstand

Last week we promised to give you a summary of our amazing, but possibly a bit confusing, collection of Exclusive Resources in the Gateway’s "News & Magazines" category. So here it is [deep breath!] -

"I think there was a story about it… last week… or the week before… or something…"

What you need for this sort of query is our mega-database of news articles, NewsUK. Here you can search all the major UK national dailies, plus scores of regional and local papers, with an increasing range of magazines.

You can search a particular publication for a particular date range, or you can search the lot together. How far back you can go varies – the national dailies tend to go back to the early 90s, while some of the mags only go back a year or so, with the rest somewhere in between. But all in all, it’s an impressive resource.

They won’t wrap chips, but they look as though they might.

We’re talking facsimile newspapers here. Search one like any other database, but what pops up on the screen is the paper as published, with all the news, pictures, features, adverts… even the spelling mistakes!

The Times – this runs from 1785 to 1985 (the pre-Murdoch years), and it was the pioneer in this field. It’s rightly popular with family history buffs, looking for obituaries and background news coverage.

UK News Online – includes the Daily & Sunday Mirror from its first edition in 1903 up to the present; also the Daily & Sunday Express (from 2000) and the Star from 2002.

Library PressDisplay – see last week’s Treasure Hunt for the full rave about this. It has facsimile newspapers from around the world, delivered to your screen before the print versions hit the streets.

The Economist – from 1843 to 2003. All the heavyweight articles, and all the colourful graphics (from the time they went colour, that is!).

And over on the magazine rack…

There are two sources for magazines. One of them I have mentioned before: NewsUK has nearly fifty magazines. Some of them are newsy (eg New Statesman, Spectator), some are trade mags (Grocer, Marketing Week) and some serve particular interests (Music Week, Electronics Weekly).

Our other magazine and journal source is Infotrac Custom Journals. This mouthful of a name gives little away, but the 38 titles include heavyweight specialist journals like the British Journal of Psychology, but also magazines for the person-with-a-hobby like Astronomy and Dance Magazine.

You can’t generalise about what these two contain, so if you’re after a magazine article, give both a try.

(From the Gateway to websites, select "News & magazines" All the resources discussed above are Key Links.
And they are all Westminster Libraries Exclusive Resources; outside the library, you will need your library card number to log in.)

Coming soon

The Guardian is getting its act together as I type, and will soon be available, with The Observer, from 1791.

Our electronic shelves are groaning under the weight – dip in and enjoy! As for me, I’m off to catch up with Andy Capp.

Pic: clarita/morguefile.com