[ANNOUNCE] Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts

[Eric Lease Morgan]

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   Try the Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts at:
   
      http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/alex/
   
   The Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts is a collection
   of digital documents. The scope of documents in the
   collection includes items from American literature,
   English literature, and Western philosophy.
   
   The Catalogue has a number of unique features. First,
   not only can you search for and display texts from the
   collection, but you can also search the content of
   located texts. For example, you can search for Mark
   Twain's The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn. You can
   then search the content of The Adventures for the words
   like fish and belly to get a description of Huck Finn's
   father.
   
   Moreover, you can search the content of multiple
   documents simultaneously. For example, you can first
   locate all the documents in the collection authored by
   Mark Twain. Next, you can search selected documents for
   something like slav* to draw out themes across texts.
   
   Another unique feature of the Catalogue is the
   on-the-fly creation of PDF files. Using this option you
   can specify things like fonts and font sizes for your
   output. For example, you can create a PDF version of
   Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle. This feature allows
   you to create simply formatted but very readable
   documents for printing; the documents in the collection
   are not necessarily intended to be read online.
   
   A third unique feature of the Catalogue is the free
   goodies available for downloading. These goodies
   include complete sets of the collected documents and
   the tools necessary to search them without the use of
   your Web browser. While you will still need a direct
   Internet connection, the search tools provide the means
   for more complex content analysis and enhance access to
   texts in the collection.
   
--
Eric Lease Morgan
Digital Library Initiatives Department, NCSU Libraries
http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/staff/morgan/