The idea of a fully digital and online library certainly puts a new perspective on the availability of knowledge and education. Where one once was required to locate a public library, one must look no further than the home computer. Becoming increasingly popular is the ability to conduct research in literature without the need to browse more than a select couple of web sites. Many archive sites offer a library of one specific topic whereas others provide a wide variety of subjects. Copyright issues generally prevent much information from reaching these archives; however, this venture into the future has already and most certainly will again prove to be a true asset for both educators and those wishing to become educated.

As many schools outfit themselves for entry into the digital era, we will find increased usage of online archives which provide greater knowledge than the physical boundaries of a local library. The use of many digital archives is becoming increasingly similar to the electronically maintained libraries found in schools. Many of these sites include search functions which will often yield more detailed results than a basic school library computer, thus enabling more efficient use of time and resources. Granted such online libraries will undoubtedly be used for acts of plagiarism in many schools, it will also provide a fulfilling and legitimate education for the rest of us.

The issues involving copyrights and the publishing of copyrighted material on a freely accessible medium cause many online libraries to limit or filter the types of literature available. We have seen such issues at our locally hosted library, http://preterhuman.net. The site was forced to close a great portion of the literature section amidst a number of copyright infringement complains. The limit of such knowledge affects educations, such as the high school level, which rely on novels and other copyrighted publications as a basis for study. A small number of authors are allowing their work to be published freely but until such acts become more widespread, we will be without many great pieces of writing.

From aliens to weapons, the preterhuman.net (http://preterhuman.net) archive currently holds over 75,000 documents on nearly 40 different subjects. For older classics in literature, Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.net/index.shtml) offers over 3500 titles. A quick browse of textfiles.com (http://textfiles.com) offers a look at bulletin board systems of the 80's and 90's. For more specific searches, the Google search engine is key in finding relevant documents.

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Paul Lezica
Network Administrator
http://preterhuman.net

12/28/03