EServer.org - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The EServer is an open access electronic publishing cooperative, founded in 1990, which publishes writings in the arts and humanities free of charge to Internet readers. It is rated by Alexa

Alexa Internet

Alexa Internet, Inc. is a California-based subsidiary company of Amazon.com that is known for its toolbar and Web site. Once installed, the toolbar collects data on browsing behavior which is transmitted to the Web site where it is stored and analyzed and is the basis for the company's Web traffic...

as the most popular arts and humanities website in the world. As of 2005, the EServer published more than 32,000 works. In December 2006 it hosted approximately 66,000 readers per day (two million per month).

Martha L. Brogan and Daphnée Rentfrow wrote in 2005 that it has "more than 200 active members, including editors of an eclectic mix of 45 discrete 'collections' (Web sites), which 'publish' more than 32,000 works." Duke University Library rates the EServer among the "best overall directories for literary information on the Web."

Scope of collection

The EServer publishes written works in the arts and humanities, largely (but not exclusively) those from the Western cultural tradition. In addition to literature such as poetry, novels, drama and short stories, the EServer publishes seven scholarly journals. Most releases are in English, but there are also significant numbers in many other languages. Whenever possible, EServer publications are released in open standards, such as XHTML.

History

The EServer was founded in 1990, when a group of graduate students set up their office computer in "Trailer H" on the Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....

campus network to permit them to collaborate with one another. In 1991, with the addition of more disk space, it became an Internet network server designed to provide public access (via FTP, telnet

TELNET

Telnet is a network protocol used on the Internet or local area networks to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communications facility using a virtual terminal connection...

and Gopher to literary research, criticism, novels, and writings from various humanities disciplines.

The site, originally called the English Server, was dedicated to publishing works in the arts and humanities free of charge to Internet readers. It was developed to assist leisure reading in particular, following a study by Geoffrey Sauer

Geoffrey Sauer

Geoffrey Sauer is an American new media theorist who researches technologies including open source software and collaborative multimedia development in the context of the history of publishing...

(the site's director) into the rapid and significant increase of books in the United States post-1979 and a consequent decrease in leisure readings among young Americans. By 1992 it was an extremely popular Gopher and FTP site, and by 1993 had a significant World Wide Web

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

presence.

Its original Internet domain name was "english-server.hss.cmu.edu", which later became "english-www.hss.cmu.edu", then "english.hss.cmu.edu", then "eng.hss.cmu.edu". In the years since, the name was shortened to "eserver.org", and it is usually referred to as "EServer."

Ideals

Contemporary publishing tend to place highest value on works that sell to broad markets. Quick turnover, high-visibility marketing campaigns for bestsellers, and corporate "superstore" bookstores have all made it less common for unique and older texts to be published. Geoffrey Sauer

Geoffrey Sauer

Geoffrey Sauer is an American new media theorist who researches technologies including open source software and collaborative multimedia development in the context of the history of publishing...

has argued that the costs this marketing adds to all books discourage people from leisure reading as a common practice. Publishers, he argues, then tend to encourage authors to write books with strong appeal to the current, undermining (if unknowingly) writings with longer-term implications.

Criticism

The EServer was described in 2005 as linking to works of varied origin and quality. It was described in July 2006 as having some broken links and some out-of-date collections.

It has moved since then heavily to open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

content management systems such as Plone

Plone (content management system)

Plone is a free and open source content management system built on top of the Zope application server. In principle, Plone can be used for any kind of website, including blogs, internet sites, webshops and internal websites. It is also well positioned to be used as a document publishing system and...

and Drupal

Drupal

Drupal is a free and open-source content management system and content management framework written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. It is used as a back-end system for at least 1.5% of all websites worldwide ranging from personal blogs to corporate, political, and...

to assist EServer editors in updating, improving and developing these links.

Copyright issues

Copyright for the texts and collections published on the EServer are held by their authors, with rare exception for works commissioned by the EServer itself. Some of the texts are published under Creative Commons

Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...

licenses, though many are distributed under an older model, which preserves the copyright in the author but permits reading and linking but not redistribution, except under specific limited conditions.

External links

About the EServer
EServer Open Access/Privacy Policies
Schultz, Ethan. "Professor's literature site most popular of its kind in world". Iowa State Daily. November 28, 2005.