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E-text s.r.l.
progetto Alessandria - Alexandria project - Alexandria-Projekts
Alexandria
projet Alexandria - proyecto Alexandria - Alexandria-projektet
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Project Alexandria: invitation letter

Dear Sir,

what follows is a circular letter which I am sending to the other directors responsible for projects aiming at the creation of free via-Internet accessible Libraries:

  • James T. Abraham & Vern G. Williamsen, Comedia, dh62258@goodnet.com & vwilliam@ccit.arizona.edu, Spain - U.S.A.
  • Marc van Oostendorp, Laurens Jz. Coster Project - Nederlandstalige klassieke literatuur in elektronische edities, coster@dds.nl, Netherlands
  • Gregory Crane, Editor in Chief, project Perseus, gcrane@emerald.tufts.edu, Greek classical literature, U.S.A.
  • Pierre Cubaud, ABU (Association des Bibliophiles Universels), cubaud@cnam.cnam.fr, France
  • Richard Hacken, EuroDocs (Primary Historical Documents From Western Europe), Richard_Hacken@byu.edu, U.S.A.
  • Michael S. Hart, Executive Director, project Gutenberg, hart@pobox.com, U.S.A.
  • Joseph Janes, Director, Internet Public Library, janes@umich.edu, U.S.A.
  • John Mark Ockerbloom, The On-line Books Page, spok+books@cs.cmu.edu, U.S.A.
  • Pierre Perroud, Athena, perroud@sc2a.unige.ch, Switzerland
  • Sergio Pou, proyecto Cervantes, spou@besttj.tij.cetys.mx, Spain
  • Daniel C. Stevenson, The Tech Classics Archive, daniels\@the-tech.mit.edu, U.S.A.
  • Steven van Leeuwen, Editor-in-Chief, project Bartleby, publications@columbia.edu, U.S.A.
  • Piet Wesselman, De Nederlandse Letteren, pwessel@xs4all.nl, Netherlands
  • Perry Willett, General Editor, Victorian Women Writers Project, PWILLETT@indiana.edu, U.S.A.
  • Director, project Runeberg, runeberg@lysator.liu.se, Sweden
  • Director, project Gutenberg Deutschland, info@abc.de, Germany
  • Director, project ARTFL, mark@gide.uchicago.edu, France
  • Director, Alexandrie, admin@alexandrie.com, Quebec
  • Sibel Adali, Turkish Poetry Homepage, sibel@cs.rpi.edu, Turchia
  • Major Zoltán, Hungarian Electronic Library, major@sopron.hu, Ungheria
  • I am the president of a cultural association (http://www.liberliber.it and its mirrors) which for three years now has been carrying on a project very similar to yours and to that of the other directors mentioned above.

    I think our associations have much in common -to begin with, the idea of a more easily accessible culture for everybody-, including a certain number of problems, such as the efficient coordination of volunteers, the visibility of our projects beyond the national borders, the way of cataloguing texts and so on.

    I was therefore wondering if it could be convenient for us to create something that might help us to find the right solutions, to make contacts between volunteers of different organizations quicker and to make the search easier for all those in the world who love literature.

    This "something" could be a sort of Universal Library to start from in search of books in all languages! Each project would continue developing in perfect autonomy, only sharing a reference place (a common Web site) and a cooperative spirit which I am sure wouldn't fail to produce good results.

    The Web site could only host a description and a link to the various national projects, or it could host the whole projects themselves, depending on what is needed. I am sure that it would be quite easy for us to find some sponsor to bear the costs (which are fairly high however) and, even if it were not so, we at the Liber Liber association would be ready to make our server and its several mirrors available for such a purpose.

    Until the Web site becomes available, the University of Milan (Italy), thanks to the interest shown by dott. Carlo Bolchini, maintains a mail-list - already working! - to help us all keep in touch easily. To subscribe to the mail-list (whose official language, for greater convenience, will be English, but translations into the different national languages will be most welcome) it is sufficient to send e-mail to the following address: majordomo@sunsite.dsi.unimi.it, writing the following contents: subscribe alexandria your_e-mail_address. To take part in the discussion, messages must be sent to the following address: alexandria@sunsite.dsi.unimi.it.

    The telematic Library could have the following URL: http://www.library.int, or some other easily-remembered name. The mail-list was called Alexandria in homage to the ancient and most famous Library, but any other name may be chosen in the future.

    If such a project (Project Alexandria?) seems interesting to you, please write back or subscribe to the mail-list. We are going to form a work group so that we can come to an agreement about the details.

    There is a good chance that Project Alexandria may be the cue for other people in the world to bring projects similiar to ours into being in their nations, which would make this "universal Library" richer and richer. We will of course see that this process is encouraged as much as possible - a free Web site I am sure would be of some encouragement, especially to small associations.

    Looking forward to receiving adhesions, we at the Project Manuzio have created a Web page containing further information -and a copy of this letter in various languages. The matter in hand is obviously something which is still to be defined in details. We count on your cooperation! You can have a look at the mentioned Web page at the following URL:

    http://www.liberliber.it/alexandria/index.html

    or at:

    http://sunsite.dsi.unimi.it/liberliber/alexandria/index.html (very quick)
    http://mirror.powernet.it/liberliber/alexandria/index.html
    http://www.i-2000net.it/mirror/liberliber/alexandria/index.html

    Yours faithfully.

    Giampaolo G. Rugo
    alexandria@mclink.it
    Liber Liber
    director Alexandria project
    Marco Calvo
    marco.calvo@mclink.it
    Liber Liber
    director of Liber Liber

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