As an individual with a background in history, I believe that it is important to understand where eBooks came from in order to understand where they are going. Whatever future lies ahead for the eBook and eReader revolution, it's worth noting that the world has recently lost an individual whose role in the development of eBooks cannot possibly be understated. At a time when the Arpanet consisted of barely more than a dozen mainframe computers, well before computers that could easily fit on one's desktop (or in one's hands), a young student at the University of Illinois who had been granted access to their hulking mainframe sat down and manually entered the text of the Declaration of Independence on a Teletype terminal on to punched paper tape (Schofield, para. 4).
Michael S. Hart's goal was a simple one, "to break down the bars of ignorance and illiteracy". It was forty years ago this past July that Hart began to manually enter the text of various books and documents that had fallen into the public domain. His goals were lofty, to make ten thousand of the most consulted books available to the public at little to no cost by the end of the twentieth century ("Project Gutenberg", para. 3). Hart called his endeavor "Project Gutenberg" after the inventor whose invention had revolutionized the written word. Over the next seventeen years, Hart managed to input 313 books on his own. After enlisting the help of volunteers, that number grew exponentially and has only continued to grow as time has gone on (Schofield, para. 5-6).
A few months back, Hart declared 2011 to be the year of the eBook and I, for one, would have to agree. Though I personally find solace in my ink and paper books, I am more than aware that the eBook and eReader revolution is underway and their impact can only going to grow from here. I'm also aware that the various texts that I've downloaded from Project Gutenberg over the past few years would probably be easier to read if I had them on an eReader. Michael S. Hart died this past September 6 in Urbana, Illinois. From obsolete books on CD-ROM to the development of software for the earliest eReaders to the development of Microsoft Reader (itself soon to become obsolete) to all of the various eReaders of today, the revolution was infinitely assisted by a man who is now gone.
We can argue that what Michael Hart did was not to create the eBook, that the texts that he inputted were merely precursors to proper eBooks but there's no denying Hart's impact. For every revolution, there has to be a few first steps and if Michael Hart's steps weren't the first, they were certainly among the first. From here, this blog will focus on a variety of issues concerning the effects of eBooks and eReaders on the library profession. For a brief preface to our group's discussion, though, this unfortunate passing is sadly all too apt.
Sources: Schofield, Jack (2011, September, 13). Michael Hart obituary. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/sep/13/michael-hart-obituary?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
Project Gutenberg. (2001). Retrieved September 16, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Gutenberg
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