Assignment: Try one of the two CD-ROMs in the SIMS Computer Lab (202 South Hall). Read a review:
Lexis/Nexis (through www.ucop.edu) has an article on Library of Congress plans to publish with Octavo (Dec. 1998), another on the market (20% schools, 20% libraries).
Gross, Michael Joseph. Rare, delicate books you can maul to your heart's content.(Octavo puts rare books on CD-ROMs) New York Times v148 (Sun, Jan 7, 1999):G6(L), col 1, 27 col in.
Zacks, Rebecca. Galileo goes digital.(rare books on CD-ROMs published by Octavo) MIT Technology Review (Cambridge, Mass.) v101, n6 (Nov-Dec, 1998):30.
Octavo Corporation publishes digital facsimiles of rare and antiquarian books and manuscripts, allowing readers to experience material as it was first published hundreds of years ago, but with the benefits and features of the information age. Their 36 titles include Mercator (1595), Palladio (1570), Holbein (1547), Chaucer by William Morris (1896), Copernicus (1543), Book of Common Praier (1550), Galileo (1610), Milton (1644), Shakespeare's poems (1640), Vesalius (1543), and Bodoni (1818). You can browse every page and the binding, and zoom in to read the text or to examine minute detail such as paper texture, engravings, or letterpress type. Depending on the book, Octavo Editions contain "live" electronic text, complete translations, transcriptions, bibliographic descriptions, and experts' commentaries. Octavo creates sharp and accurate photographs of the original pages using a traditional large-format camera with a digital scanning back, at resolutions up to 10,600 x 12,800 pixels. The smaller the book, the more it can be magnified on a computer screen without losing resolution; some Octavo Editions can be magnified up to 800%. For most Octavo Editions, after an intensive editorial process of capturing the book's original text, converting it to digital format, and proofing against the original, the text is placed behind the high-resolution image of each page. The images and text are combined and distilled into Adobe Acrobat PDF (portable document format) files that can be viewed with the free, cross-platform Acrobat Reader which comes on each title's CD. Bookmarks containing indices, tables of contents, and lists of illustrations allow readers to navigate through the edition. Live text, when present, can be searched, and copied and pasted into other applications. Book pages can be printed to common black & white or color printers.