Robert Darnton
An Early Information Society
About the Project
Introduction
Robert Darnton's "An Early Information Society" is the first electronic article produced by the American Historical Review. It is an experiment in using the new electronic medium as a means of disseminating historical scholarship. The editors hope that in addition to producing an enhanced version of Darnton's essay, this “e-article” will provide some useful examples of ways to present historical arguments and materials through electronic publication.
This site contains an electronic version of the presidential address with links to a digitized map of Paris that includes cafés where police gathered information about political activities, police reports from those cafés, illustrations from the era, audio of versions of songs that conveyed political news (sung by French performer Hélène Delavault), texts of the song lyrics, and an essay by Darnton analyzing those songs. In addition, there is information about an online discussion of the address that the AHR will host March 13-27, 2000.
We welcome your comments on this experiment. Please send them to journal's email address [ahr@indiana.edu].
[This site has been constructed by Indiana University librarian Jian Liu and AHR staffers Sean Quinlan and Allyn Roberts.]
Acknowledgements
This project has been a truly collaborative effort. Apart from those directly involved with its conception and development, there are many more people who have lent a helping hand. To these people, I'd like to say, "THANK YOU!" -- Jian Liu
1. To Ann Bristow and Julie Bobay of Indiana University Libraries. Both Ann and Julie have been actively involved with the project, especially Ann, who brought me to the project, and provided guidance, advice and criticism along every step of the project, and Julie, who, beside her comments and advice, provided necessary funding through her Walden Endowment.
2. To the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Leadership and Career Development Program, of which I am a fortunate participant during 1999-2000. One of the requirements of the program is the research project, and the development of the electronic version of the AHA's Presidential Address fits well with the ARL program's research project. Thanks go to Dean Suzanne Thorin for recommending me to the program, to Joseph Branin, my program mentor, and to DeEtta Jones, Director of the program, the faculty and my fellow participants, for the best program I have ever attended.
3. To Kathryn Deiss of ARL, Shelley Phipps of University of Arizona Library and particularly to Scott Bennett of Yale University Library, three of the faculty members of the ARL program, who listened to me at the early formative stage of the project, and gave me encouragement and critical comments.
4. To Jon Dunn and Aaron Reichert of Indiana University Digital Library Program for providing expertise in digitization of the maps and songs; to Eileen Fry, the Slide Librarian, for helping me with digitizing negatives.
5. To Joel Silver, Rebecca Cape and James Canary of the Indiana University Lilly Library for providing professional and colleagial assistance in digitizing the Plan Turgot.
6. To my colleagues in the Reference Department, who provided immediate feedback on the web design, especially Jeff Graf, the resident French expert in the department, who helped me solve most of the French puzzles, to Celestina Wroth for her frequent insightful comments, and to Joseph Tennis, a SLIS student and Reference Assistant, who gave me numerous ideas and introduced me to the potentials of VRML.
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