I spent about thirty minutes tonight composing a post to C18-L to contribute to the discussion taking place regarding Thomson-Gale’s Eighteenth-Century Collections online but then couldn’t get what I wanted to say to come out right. I was going to cross post to my blog, but instead I offer you this:

Vernica Downey linked to my entry on the online Gutenberg Bible at the University of Texas. Following the TrackBack to her blog, I read an entry that mentions a cover by Dar Williams‘ of REM‘s “Don’t Fall on Me.

Following this link I learned that Ms. Williams has also covered a song by Pierce Pettis, for whom I did some computer work a zillion years ago because he used to be married to an English professor where I got my B.A. and M.A.

All roads lead to where you are.

Hopefully the Thomson-Gale thoughts will arrange themselves in a more orderly fashion at some point in the future. When they do, I’ll share them with you, of course.

Perhaps you’ve already read that the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin has digitized their copy of the Gutenberg Bible, considered the first significant Western book to be printed using movable type (no, not MovableType, movable type), and placed these digitized images online.

Well, did you know that the British Library has also put their copy online?

And Keio University in Japan has done the same.

I’m looking for more sites like these. Any suggestions?

• Nervousness Industries
• 1000 Journals
• Bookcrossing
• The Collective Journal Project

Update: I suppose I should provide a little more context. My interest in sites and communities like these comes from the fact that I have just the faintest inkling of an idea for an article or research project about readers & reading and writers & writing. Bookcrossing, for example, is a site that allows you to “release” your books “into the wild” by leaving them at a bus stop, in a restaurant, in a classroom, or in any public space, having first “tagged” them by affixing a sticker to them with the web address for Bookcrossing and a unique serial number for that particular book. Before releasing, you register the book on the site, and then anyone who picks up the book can go to the website, report having found it, and write their impressions before releasing it again and allowing another reader to find it. The cycle would repeat itself indefinitely, in theory. I’ve known about the site for almost a year, and I have actually found a book that had been released: it was a Phillip K. Dick novel, I believe. I gave it to a friend who expressed interest, but I don’t think he ever recorded having found it.

Anyway, back to my interest: If there are other sites like these, I’d like to know about them. A possible research project might be to conduct a survey of the reading experience of the community members (or “site registrants”), since their contact information is retrievable.

But like I said, I have just the faintest inkling of an idea. Other research threads are taking priority right now, but for the future…

I would like to officially announce that I am having a bad day. An unproductive, headachey, fuzzy-brained, and pessimistic day. I hope to post something worth reading sometime soon, but until then, I would welcome any suggestions for getting out of this funk.

C18-L, a listserv devoted to eighteenth-century studies, has been around more than ten years. Kevin Berland, C18-L founder and self-appointed “netwallah,” has announced the creation of a C18 wiki. This could get interesting.

Or it could go nowhere. We’ll see.

Update: Perhaps it would help if I posted a link directly to the wiki, eh?