The central aim of the BURKS project is to make as much relevant information as possible available to students of computer science at the lowest possible price. Many (perhaps most) students now have PCs of their own, and CD drives are now the norm rather than the exception. Internet access from home is still prohibitively expensive for most of our students, and access from college ties up college machines that might be used more productively for other purposes. Shuttling several megabytes of information at a time between college and home isn't easy, either. Apart from this, the Internet's a big place these days, and unless you know where to look you can waste a lot of time trying to track down information. What I've down is to track down free information and software and gather it all onto a single CD. No Internet access is required -- all you need is a PC with a CD drive. And so that people who do have Internet access can also benefit, a copy of this CD is available online at the University of Brighton.
The CD contents tend to reflect my own personal interests (software development, operating systems, the Internet) since I generally know where to look and what to look for in these areas. I have tried to broaden the range of topics, but I haven't found any good material on topics such as databases, systems analysis, formal methods and so on. Perhaps this is just a reflection of my ignorance of these areas. If you can suggest any good material, please let me know (see the section on "How to provide feedback" for details of how to get in touch with me).
The original idea for this CD arose as a result of a discussion one night when I went down the pub with my colleague Mike Smith. At first it was going to be a joint effort, but Mike was busy working on a book, so I went ahead and started work on it by myself over the summer of 1996. At the time I was maintaining a small shareware archive at the University of Brighton, which was a useful starting point for the software section of the CD. I'd also collected some useful stuff off the Web for my own personal use. I spent the rest of the summer cataloguing it all and contacting authors for permission to use their work. I also managed to get permission from the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University to use the Cello web browser on the CD.
The first edition of this CD was released at the beginning of October 1996 as a run of 250 copies. Because of the small print run, the selling price was £7.00 (which is still pretty cheap). It was funded by a loan from the School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences at the University of Brighton, and proved extremely successful. To my surprise, it was not only popular with students but also with industry, since Internet access is often restricted for security reasons. We made a sufficient surplus to fund a second print run, and this provided yet more of a surplus which was carried forward into the production of this edition.
In June 1997, BURKS version 1 received the University of Brighton
Innovation Award, which includes a small cash prize. This goes to
show that non-profit activities can be profitable... :-)
Due to the success of the first edition, we've managed to attract funding from GEC-Marconi and Pavilion Internet which has made it possible to produce a much larger print run, and as a result we've been able to drop the price to £3.00 per copy. Since the costs of the initial print run have been borne by our sponsors, we've been able to give away 1500 copies to universities, schools and colleges throughout the UK, and the remaining copies are being sold in order to cover the reordering costs of any future print runs that might be necessary. Most of the price is to cover distribution costs, so we're able to offer substantial reductions for bulk orders. For more details, see the ordering information section.
Of course, I'm planning to continue improving this CD in future editions, but each new edition requires financial support (a few thousand pounds to cover startup costs). If you might be interested in sponsoring future editions, please let me know.
BURKS 2 includes a lot of new and updated material by comparison with
the first edition. (It could have included even more, but I ran out of
space. This was lucky in a way because it meant I had to stop fiddling
and finish it off... :-)
The main differences are:
:-)
A resource like this relies on the generosity and goodwill of people all over the world. I want to thank all my colleagues who have helped make this CD a success (especially Garth Glynn, Dan Simpson and Mike Smith), and I also want to thank all those people who have granted me permission to redistribute their work here:
Colin Allen, R.E. den Braasem, Frank Brokken, Thomas Boutell, Chris Burke, Tom Christiansen, Marshall Cline, Katherine Cochrane, Andrew Cumming, Rowan Davies, Steve Dekorte, Gordon Dodrill, Mark Emmer, Arnoud "Galactus" Engelfriet, Gavin Estey, Gordon Fecyk, Eric Foster-Johnson, Jim Frost, Jean-loup Gailly, John Grieggs, Ralph Griswold, David Hanson, David Harley, Bob Hathaway, Jan Haugland, Jeffrey Hobbs, Denis Howe, Graham Hutton, Mark Kantrowitz, Ted Jensen, Magnus Kempe, Mumit Khan, Jak Kirman, Thomas Kistler, Peter Knaggs, Stefan Koch, Peter van der Linden, Corey Liss, Arnim Littek, Nikki Locke, Ken Lunn, Robin Mabry, Vikas Malik, Rod van Meter, Bertrand Meyer, Peter Millard, Mark Moraes, Vijay Mukhi, Michel Olagnon, John Ousterhout, Jocelyn Paine, John Peterson, Cuno Pfister, Ken Polsson, Dave Raggett, Ross Richardson, Jean-Paul Rodrigue, Perry Rovers, Guido van Rossum, Pieter Schoenmakers, Peter Sestoft, Steve Summit, Rick Sutcliffe, Conrad Taylor, Brad Templeton, Larry Virden, Larry Wall, George Wenzel, David Wheeler, Scot Wingo, Niklaus Wirth and Tatu Ylonen.(and if I've forgotten anyone, my profound apologies).
I also welcome any feedback which would help me improve future editions of this CD. If you have any comments or suggestions to make, you can either email them to me at je@brighton.ac.uk or use the online feedback form.