Of Books and Bytes: Electronic Texts at the University of Virginia Rare Book School. (1995) (original) (raw)

It is not difficult to understand the intellectual and personal allure of a week-long course at an international Rare Book School In Charlottesville, Virginia: to live on the Lawn in one of Jefferson's rooms, to spend your days surrounded by books and bibliophiles, to attend lectures in the Rotunda, and to explore the book culture from paper-making and illustration techniques to cataloging and collecting. But to come to such a gathering and to spend five, eight-hour days in a lab chained to a keyboard, staring at a computer screen -- that takes a little more explaining. Yet for each annual Rare Book School since 1993, we have seen a growing number of bibliophiles, scholars, librarians, and book dealers traveling from across the United States and from Europe to do just that. They come for one of two courses – “Introduction to the Internet“ and “Introduction To Electronic Texts.” We are only now beginning to think seriously about the implications of electronic texts for our teaching and research, and for the creation of "virtual" collections of related items in digital facsimile form, made up of holdings from a variety of institutions.