Krieger, D. (1998, March/April). Bibliophiles of the world, unite! A 21st century spin on the fabled library of Alexandria. Networker, 8(4).

This article provides an overview of the history of electronic books on the Internet and calls for their virtual consolidation into one large digital library, "a grand, Internet-based archive of all written human knowledge -- a 21st century spin on the fabled Library of Alexandria." Krieger describes various proposals to accomplish this, as well as current initiatives by organizations around the world that are working on issues that would need to be resolved for this idea to be realized. She also discusses the technological feasibility of such an effort and possible strategies for financing it. Included are a good discussion of the copyright problems that plague any such digitization effort, and a fairly thorough list of major on-line repositories of electronic texts.

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