PROVIDENCE, RI, March 22, 1995--Electronic Book Technologies, Inc. (EBT) today announced the formal kickoff of a first-of-its-kind Educational Grant Program to support research into next-generation, open, standards-based publishing of 'digital libraries' on the Internet. The Educational Grant Program is designed to advance the tools and practices available to publishers for utilizing vendor-, platform-, and application-independent online publishing models. Additionally, the Educational Grant Program aims to garner further support for SGML (ISO Standard 8879 for electronic publishing) by expanding its use in the educational community, enabling institutions to be more effective and competitive.
The University of California at Berkeley (UC Berkeley) announced that it will be the first Educational Grant Program recipient. EBT's grant to UC Berkeley will foster advanced research into digital libraries, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the US Department of Education. The UC Berkeley Library is currently conducting research and demonstration programs to investigate SGML-based methods for electronically publishing primary source materials including text, photographs, manuscripts, maps and music scores from a wide variety of scholarly works. Finding aids--documents that provide intellectual control and access to archival collections--will be encoded in a DTD (Document Type Definition) developed and published by Berkeley. Primary source materials will then be scanned to produce digital images that are linked to the finding aids.
EBT software will provide scholars with powerful capabilities to browse and search the finding aids on the Internet. When a scholar clicks on a thumbnail of interest, an image viewer will be launched to display a high resolution version of the image. Initially, a large number of the finding aids and primary source materials selected for electronic publication will be from UC Berkeley's Bancroft Library. This model will be extended to incorporate finding aids and digital images from a large number of collaborating institutions (see below).
The target audience of the Digital Library Initiative is the international community of scholars that use primary source materials to support their research efforts. By providing Internet access to these materials, scholars will more often be able to work from their home institutions, rather then flying around the world to search special collections.
"We are excited to receive EBT's online publishing tools, clearly the most mature SGML-based online publishing solutions in the marketplace. EBT's tools will go a long way toward helping us to propel scholarly research into the next century," said Bernie Hurley, Director for Library Systems, UC Berkeley Library. "It is Berkeley's desire to establish the finding aid DTD, developed in the Berkeley Library, as a national standard. Therefore, collaborators have been actively sought to help review and refine the DTD."
Ten collaborators have agreed to begin using the Berkeley DTD to encode a number of their finding aids as part of the American Heritage Virtual Digital Archive Project. These institutions include, The Library of Congress, The National Archives and Record Administration, the British Library, the National Library of Australia, the Columbia University Library, the Cornell University Library, the Harvard University Library, the Stanford University Library, The California State Historical Society, and The Minnesota State Historical Society.
"The educational community has always had a very strong interest in our products, but the cost for our solutions was usually a barrier," said Kent Summers, Director of Marketing at EBT. "Our Educational Grant Program now provides universities direct access to our tools free of charge. It also gives institutions the opportunity to showcase their talents and research strengths, as well as provides access to a collaborative network of 'best practices'. This program will result in some pretty interesting developments on the Internet, while fostering the evolution of scholarly research. We invite all universities to apply," continued Summers.
Institutions interested in applying to EBT's Educational Grant Program should contact EBT's Educational Grant Program coordinator at (401) 421-9550 or send e-mail to info@ebt.com. Those that qualify for the Educational Grant Program receive up to $200,000 worth of the following EBT tools:
DynaText(tm) Indexer: Creates dynamic electronic books viewable by DynaText browsers directly from ISO standard SGML documents.
DynaText InStEd(tm) (Interactive Stylesheet Editor): Creates/edits DynaText stylesheets which define DynaText electronic books online format/behavior.
DynaText PubPac: Annual license for unlimited titles and unlimited distribution.
DynaText Browsers (Unlimited): Enables end-users to view, search, navigate and annotate DynaText electronic books.
DynaWeb(tm) Server: Hybrid Web Server for the Internet that delivers DynaText electronic book libraries direct to any Internet Web-clients.
DynaTag(tm): Converts proprietary word-processing documents directly into SGML, DynaText books, and InStEd Stylesheets.
DynaText, introduced in 1990, is the world's leading SGML-based online publishing system. DynaText accepts any valid SGML document and automatically builds a dynamic electronic book that enables users to quickly browse, search and annotate large documents. DynaText electronic books can include hyperlinks, tables, equations, graphics, audio, video and animation. Full-text searches can be conducted for individual and collections or "libraries" of DynaText books. DynaText electronic books can be shared on heterogeneous client/server networks or placed on standalone workstations, PCs or PDAs. DynaText runs on Microsoft(tm) Windows(tm) and Apple Macintosh(R) systems, as well as all major UNIX(R) platforms.
Electronic Book Technologies, Inc. (EBT) provides corporate and commercial publishers with the industry's most comprehensive standards-based online publishing solution. EBT, a founding member of SGML Open and the MIT World-Wide Web Consortium (W3C), has developed a product suite engineered from the ground up around SGML. Current products include: DynaText, the premier solution for SGML-based electronic information delivery; DynaTag, an easy to use conversion-to-SGML tool; DynaBase(tm), a native SGML document management repository; and DynaWeb, a high-function SGML World-Wide Web server for the Internet. DynaText currently reside on millions of desktops through widespread deployment by Autodesk, Legent, Novell, Siemens Nixdorf, Silicon Graphics, Sun Microsystems, Sybase, AT&T, Australian Telecom, British Telecom and Ericsson Telekom. Major corporations and publishers across all major industries use EBT products to develop, deliver and manage their corporate information assets in the vendor-neutral SGML format. EBT is privately held and headquartered in Providence, RI.
Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) is an international ISO standard for the publication and delivery of electronic information. SGML has been adopted by industries with large amounts of in-house publishing including aircraft, airlines, automotive, computer, defense, electronics, pharmaceuticals, securities, telecommunications and transportation, as well as government systems integrators, publishing companies, and academic research centers.
Media contacts:
Paul Lamoureux
EBT
(401) 421-9550
Bernie Hurley
UC Berkeley
(510) 642-5168
Linda Pendergast-Savage
Miller Communications
(617) 536-0470
DynaText, DynaBase, DynaTag, DynaWeb and InStEd are trademarks of Electronic Book Technologies, Inc. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, exclusively licensed through X/Open Company Ltd. All other products or service names mentioned herein are trademarks of their respective owners
Last updated and validated 3 March 1995.