the Internet Public Library

Online Texts Help & Frequently Asked Questions

What all is in this collection?

Various online books, stories, essays, poems, articles, dramas, letters and speeches that are freely available over the Internet.

What is the criteria for inclusion?

Any online text that resembles a traditional non-online text, and is available in its entirety for free, is eligible for inclusion. Generally, materials which were created specifically for primary distribution on the Internet have not been included, nor have materials which are likely ephemeral (i.e. will likely disappear in a few weeks).

Why can't I find a book by my favorite author? Why can't I find a specific book?

There are several reasons why this might be so:

• The item is not freely available. Anything published after 1923 is most likely still covered by copyright. Unless the copyright owner has allowed for the work to be made available over the Internet, it won't be.
• The work has not been converted to digital form. Even if a work is out of copyright, someone still has to convert it from print to digital before it can be distributed over the Internet. The vast majority of printed material available has never been converted; only a small fraction has been so far.
• We haven't gotten around to adding it yet. We're adding items to the Online Texts collection as fast as possible, but because we take the time to properly catalog each item, it takes time to add materials. Also, because new items are being transfered to digital format all the time, we may not know of its existence. If you know of a text that is available over the Internet that is not in our collection, please let us know.
• Check your spelling. Even if you think you have spelled your words correctly, proper nouns and transliteration of foreign words can be a big stumbling block. If the search engine is giving you troubles, try browsing by author or title instead.

Why do you have certain texts in one format (HTML broken up by chapters, one long text file, PDF, page images, etc.) and not in the format I want?

We do not store any of the texts locally. We are not the content providers of these texts, we just catalog them for you in one convenient location. Thus, we are stuck with whatever format the content provider has elected to use.

Why Dewey?

Why not? Seriously, the much-maligned Dewey Decimal Classification has many things going for it for this application:

• Comprehensiveness. For good or ill, Dewey tries to encompass all aspects of human knowledge. With the wide variety of topics covered by online texts, this is a necessity. It's true that despite its many revisions over the years, Dewey still maintains a turn-of-the-century Western knowledge slant in its organization. But since the majority of online texts available are from the same era, this is actually a good fit. Where things just didn't work, we deviated from Dewey (see next question).
• Browsability. The (almost) hierarchical structure of Dewey provides a good way to browse for works on a specific topic, even if you don't know the author or a specific title.
• Familiarity. Most people were introduced to Dewey in elementary school, and most school and public libraries use Dewey to classify their books. Thus if you find a text on a specific subject in the IPL, chances are that you'll find books on similar topics near the same Dewey number in your own library (and vice versa).

To learn more about the Dewey Decimal Classification, see the OCLC Dewey Site.

Does your Dewey-like classification differ from real Dewey?

Although our classification is based on DDC 20, we've taken a few liberties here and there, either because Dewey didn't effectively describe a subject area (as in the computer sections) or for expediency or clarity. The biggest change has to do with the nature of the medium: because we don't have to place actual books on actual shelves, we are able to assign more than one Dewey number to each item. This has allowed us to describe many items more accurately and give more access points for browsing and searching; employing multiple Dewey numbers has really added a new dimension to an old classification.

So how does the whole thing work?

Without going into the gory technical details: the records for the items are stored in a Filemaker Pro database. Roughly once a week, each record is converted to SGML and exported to a server, where they are indexed by an SGML indexer. CGI scripts interface with an SGML search engine to provide both the searching and browsing capabilities of the collection.

Why did you do it that way?

Because we wanted to see how well it would work. There are a multitude of different ways to end up with the same result; this just made the most sense to us at the time.

What do the things in each item record mean?

See our Item Record Explanation page. (Coming soon. Really.)

Who is responsible for this?

The IPL Online Texts collection is a joint project of the IPL and the University of Michigan Humanities Text Intitiative.

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