Workshop on Electronic Texts

A brittle nineteenth-century book cannot simply be guillotined and fed into a machine. Yet leaving it on a shelf keeps its rare testimony beyond the reach of all but those who can get to Washington.

At the Library of Congress in June 1992, librarians, scholars, image-makers and network specialists gathered to ask how electronic texts could carry unique collections to a wider public. Their discussions turn on a stubborn choice: make more material available, even if digitized text is imperfect, or preserve every detail at the cost of reaching fewer readers. From fragile manuscripts to searchable pages, the proceedings trace the practical and scholarly questions behind a new kind of access. How can these works travel widely without losing the evidence held in their pages?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.