Date: Tue, 23 Jul 1996
From: Barbara Diederichs
Subject: Hypertext

Once again, I'll extend an invitation, particularly to those disapppointed in hypertext narrative who haven't had the chance to read many or to instructors wishing to use the materials. If you have Fetch or ftp available, retrieve from pub/Landow on iris.brown.edu (1) a sampling of hypertext webs in Storyspace, (2) directions for reading them, (3) a description in Word of all webs created at Brown (so you can ask for others not presently on the server), and (4) a read-only version of Storyspace. The only webs not available are those published by Johns Hopkins or Eastgate. Eastgate is also publishing a sampling in December of such materials.

In a few months, we expect to put the descriptions on WWW.

WWW materials about Hypertext at Brown University

Several interlinked collections of materials about the history of hypertext at Brown University now reside on the Scholarly Technology Group (STG) server, whose URL is http://twine.stg.brown.edu/stg.html. The first, to which I and others will add as time and opportunity permits, is "Hypertext at Brown," which is essentially a directory or homepage of the the history of hypertext here from Andries van Dam's 1967 Hypertext Editing System and FRESS to devel- opment and use of Intermedia to the present. I have added materials about the Institute for Research in Information and Scholarship (IRIS) and Intermedia, including a full bib- liography of IRIS papers, both published and those deposited in the archives, and large screen shots that will provide WWW users an opportunity to see what this advanced hypertext system looked like. "Hypertext at Brown" also contains an introduction to Electronic Book Technologies's DynaText. Of particular interest to WWW users should be the guide to the Storyspace Cluster that Marc Zbyszynski [pronounced Br'shzinski] created in Storyspace and that I recreated in html, adding screen shots to show WWW users some of the ap- pearance and capacities of a rich form of hypertext. Marc's Storyspace Cluster project consists of a large number of heavily interlinked lists, ranging from "Subject" and "Theme" to "Sex" and "Roland Barthes." Following a link from the master list takes the reader to a list of webs that Marc has placed in a particular category, and following links from their titles produces a summary of the particular web created either by the author, Marc, Shelley Jackon, or me. The URL for "Hypertext at Brown":

http://twine.stg.brown.edu/projects/hypertext/landow/HtatBrown/Brown

The URL for the Storyspace Cluster Project: http://twine.stg.brown.edu/projects/hypertext/landow/SSPCluster/Welc

In addition, I have been working for the past four months on WWW versions of a series of books and essays of mine on Victorian literature, painting, and relgion with the object of experimenting with ways of adapting printed texts for most convenient, accessible use on the Net. You can ob- tain these either from the Hypertext at Brown page or from the entry under on my name from " . . projects/hypertext."

In conjunction with the Symposium, an extensive bibliography on hypertext/hypermedia has been compiled. In addition to citing articles and books about hypertext, the bibliography provides links to:

some full text documents
home pages and other biographical sources for major writers on hypertext sample course pages used in hypertext classes hypertext resources on the Web

Although cross-disciplinary, the bibliography's largest segments are devoted to education, library science, and literary research/theory.

The URL is: http://gwis.circ.gwu.edu/~gelman/hyperbib.html

For more information about the hypertext bibliography, or the Symposium, contact:

Scott Stebelman
Gelman Library
George Washington University
Washington, D.C. 20052
202/994-6049 (work)
202/994-1340 (fax)
scottlib@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu