I never really thought of myself like Andrew Carnegie. After all, how can I build a network of libraries like he did. I am decidedly not a millionaire but some changes in technology and the emergence of the internet as a way to get from here to there for next to nothing has made it possible to build quite an interesting Digital Library. I even have the audacity to name it after myself because I want it to stand as a legacy in much the way Carnegie libraries have.
The idea for the library came from my surfing the net and happening on Project Gutenberg. The Gutenberg project planned the ambitious task of making all written works available online as downloadable files on the internet. While the number of books so far processed and cleared for copyright in digital form is still tiny, the idea is sound and I wanted to take the idea further by making these files readable online. I felt that many people were daunted by the idea of downloads and FTP transfers, so we have made a place that they start by typing /go BOOKS and read the works by selecting entries from our menus.
I was able to do this because of a unique Bulletin Board Service (BBS) called One Crossroads Place. Most regular readers know this, but I'll put it in for completeness: This BBS launched three years ago by Computers Today on Television and ComputerUser Magazine in Kansas City has dramatically expanded to become one of the largest BBS's in the world. It can be reached by direct dial up from over 100 U.S. cities and called toll-free from the Internet and the World Wide Web. It was a fairly simple matter to start by clearing some disk space on one of the mail servers and excited an area student, Jason Bengel, to build the menus for it.
Jason did such a good job that other volunteers on the BBS started to help, and the project grew to become the first BBS site that we know of to have the books digitized by Project Gutenberg, called e-texts, to be read on-line. In the process I found hardware to run the service on but the scope of the library now requires additional phone lines and other significant improvements. In less than six months the service has reached over 40,000 calls and several thousand regular users.
With this kind of activity I soon realized that your original free telephone lines provided by Kansas City Power and Light, ComputerUser, Metropolis and other public-minded companies would soon be overwhelmed by the volume of calls. It was clear this project required additional help, but not being a profit center for the company had no real budget for doing so.
When the Kauffman Foundation approached us for training area students in entrepreneurial skills I remembered the great work Jason had done and saw that the two new students this program presented could provide the staff power to expand the library. Now students in thousands of places all over the earth can, by way of the Internet a global network of networks, come to this digital library we are creating and check out a book, or download it and keep it forever. How about that--a library with no late charges.
But to do it we need to recruit more help. That is where Jeanine Barrett comes in. It will be her job to approach public-minded companies and present to them the idea of helping the library. While the Kauffman Foundation will be helping her by making a scholarship available, she will be helping her fellow William Chrisman students by making the library available to more and more of them. Also deeply involved in the project is Scott Preston who will be doing much of the programming and menu building much as Jason before him.
Because of the nature of the Internet, where every place is a local phone call to every other place, what Jeanine and Scott build here will also be available to every one on earth that the Internet reaches. That is as many as 30 million additional computers in over 250 other countries. For this reason many other area libraries are getting involved. The system already has direct links to all the print-based metro area libraries and will be assisting in making the collection of the Truman Presidential Library available on the Internet.
If you would like to help the library, or visit it, here is the contact info. The library now runs on the BBS at 913-663-1100. Call 24 hours a day by modem. We soon will have a web site running, the URL will be HTTP://kcmo.metrobbs.com/ or you can call me at 816-252-4080 during business hours. We hope you like our library. Today it is much smaller than the ones Andrew Carnegie built, but give me the 20 years he worked at it and who knows?
If you would like to have computer questions answered, please send them to me by e-mail at Kansas City Mail Online or by the Internet: graeme@kcmo.metrobbs.com. The e-mail impaired can reach me by fax at 816-252-5545 or phone at 816-252-4080.
Graeme Gibson, C.D.P. is the Service Director of Computer Training Corporation and author of ``How to Build a Clone Computer'' and ``The Computer Repair Handbook.'' A former NASA programmer, he has worked in the computer field since 1972. His weekly TV show Computers Today is distributed locally by American Cablevision and Tele-Cable.
copyright 1995 Graeme Gibson, C.D.P.
copyright Graeme Gibson, C.D.P. 1996
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