Robert C. Darnton, the new director of the Harvard University Library, has promised to help the institution “move into the world of digitized information.” The librarian isn’t just talking the talk: As The Harvard Crimson notes, he’s working on an ambitious e-book project of his own.
Mr. Darnton has spent years poring over unpublished letters in an obscure Swiss archive, and he’s now ready to write a book about 18th-century book smuggling across the French border. If all goes as planned, the book will be published digitally, and it will allow each reader to create a personal version of the text, based on his or her interest in reading digitized excerpts of the unpublished messages and other source material.
The librarian hopes to let people print hardbound copies of the book, each of them customized and unique. “The notion of the final fixed copy is giving way,” he says. “Texts are always in flux.” —Brock Read
