Fine Print

Wow. I just stumbled across the Eclipse project: "The collection focuses on digital facsimiles of out-of-print small-press books and journals from the past quarter-century, as well as major new works of innovative writing." Among the treasures gathered here: the complete run of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, the pathbreaking broadsheet published by Bruce Andrews and Charles Bernstein from 1978 to 1981. There's an interesting interface to boot (back on the main page).

This is the Web at its best. Push/pull streaming interactive dynamic whatever: I've seen it all, but pure preservation and access like this still takes my breath away. Another amazing resource in this vein is a full-text set of the scholarly journal Studies in Bibliography, courtesy of Virginia's Electronic Text Center. No, it's not a journal about the art of making lists. SB, as it's known to its devotees, was (and is) the premier venue for anayltical bibliography, the study of the book as a physical object. (Bibliography of the list-making sort is technically known as enumerative bibliography.) Anyway, the online run of SB represents a wealth of scholarship, much of it contributed during the fierce stewardship of its founder, the legendary Fredson Bowers. Bowers is not a household name, but he had a tremendous scholarly career, and no one else has done as much to clarify and consolidate our understanding of books qua books. Analytical bibliography was media studies well before the latter became hip.