According to founder and CEO of Bartleby.com, Steven van Leeuwen, the Bartleby Project offers, “the most comprehensive public reference library ever published on the web” (Bartleby.com, 2000, para. 4). The Bartleby Project—the name of which comes from Melville’s classic short story Bartleby, the Scrivener—began as a personal research experiment at Columbia University in which van Leeuwen sought to combine his information systems knowledge with his love of books to create accessible, searchable electronic versions of classic literature and reference works. The first book published on the site was Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass in 1994. Following this success, van Leeuwen continued to develop the project privately, becoming Bartleby.com in 1997 and continuing to expand into the impressive collection of classic and modern reference and works of literature that it is today (Hane, 2000).
On first visiting the site, the user is impressed by the simple, friendly layout. The collection is divided into Reference, Verse, Fiction, and Nonfiction. Users can click on drop down menus or tabs for each category to go directly to the title of the work they seek. And each menu or tab is divided into subcategories so users may locate similar formats or subjects with ease. Works can also be found through author, subject, or title keyword searches, or one can browse the “featured” selections that are frequently updated on the home page. The content of every title in the collection can be keyword searched to locate specific quotes or phrases that are of interest to the user within the work.
In addition to the notably simplistic design, the collection itself provides access to a remarkable breadth and depth of both classic and contempora...
... middle of paper ...
...rary as posed by the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee. While it does not offer any services of a traditional library such as reference help, etc., the searchable full-text documents provide quick, easy access to information that once had to be tediously skimmed by hand. Anyone needing reference information or access to classic literature would be remiss not to employ Bartleby.com’s resources.
Works Cited
Bartleby.com (2000, March 20). Bartleby.com Unveils Web’s Premier Reference Library. Retrieved from http://www.bartleby.com/sv/pr032000.html
Bartleby.com (2011). Facts at a glance. Retrieved from http://www.bartelby.net/press/facts.html
Hane, P.J. (2003, April 3). Bartleby.com relaunches site with modern and classic reference works. Information Today. Retrieved from http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/nbreader.asp?ArticleID=17824
...X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama, 8th Ed., edited by Joseph Terry. New York: Longman, 2002.
Meyer, Michael, ed. The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999.
DiYanni, Robert. Literature Reading Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and the Essay. McGraw Hill : Boston, Massachusette, 1998.
The book contains some of what you would expect in a book by revolting librarians. There are the requisite essays on the suppression of civil liberties through the Patriot Act along with essays detailing the problem of cultural representation in the Library of Congress Subject Headings. And of course, there's something both by and about Sandy Berman, a living legend among progressive librarians. But there are also quite a few surprises. Ever curious about the astrological breakdown of librarians? You'll find an extensive article complete with enough statistics to make you break out your notes from IRLS 506. [Leos dominate the field, with Aquarians an astrological minority.] Another notable essay concerns what services librarians can offer to day laborers.
Literature, An introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing, X.J. Kennedy, Dana Gioia, The Things We Carried pg 625
Baym, Nina, and Robert S. Levine. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012. Print.
Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia. Literature: ,talk, An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and
Walker, Alice. “Everyday Use.” Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and the Essay. 4th ed. Robert DiYanni, Ed. New York: McGraw Hill, 1998. 408-413.
DiYanni, Robert. "Literature, Reading Fiction, Poetry and Drama." Walker, Alice. Everyday Use. Boston: McGraw Hill, 1973. 743-749.
Booth, Alison, J. Paul Hunter, and Kelly J. Mays. The Norton Introduction to Literature. Shorter 9th ed. New York: Norton, 2006. A7
In the short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” which was written by Herman Melville, the character named Bartleby is a very odd, yet interesting individual. In the story, Bartleby is introduced when he responds to a job opening at the narrator’s office. Although there is no background information given about him, it becomes very apparent that he will be the antagonist in this story. Unlike the usual image put on the antagonist, Bartleby causes conflict with a very quiet and calm temperament. This character’s attitude, along with the fact that he is a flat and static character, makes him a very unique antagonist, and this fact is shown through the way other characters approach and deal with his conflict.
McMichael, G., et. al., (1993) Concise Anthology of American Literature- 5th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Kennedy, X. J., & Gioia, D. (2013). Literature: An introduction to fiction, poetry, drama, and
Roberts, Edgar V., Jacobs, Henry E. “Literature.” The Lesson. 470-475. Toni Cade Bambara. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. 2001
Herman Melville wrote about Bartleby in Bartleby the Scrivener and in The Dead Letter Office. The Dead Letter Office is a post office in Washington D.C. where letters end up at a dead end because the letters were not able to reach the destinations they were sent to. So whoever they had been sent to never got those them. Bartleby's job was to get those letters and later on burn them. In Bartleby the Scrivener, Bartleby no longer works in the Dead Letter Office; he now works for a lawyer. "Dead Letters And Dead Men: Narrative Purpose In 'Bartleby'" written by Thomas R. Mitchell and “Melville’s Bartleby, The Scrivener" by Todd Giles are both critical articles where the authors point out different meanings from “Bartleby the Scrivener” relating Bartleby to a dead letter. There is great significance within the story between Bartleby and the Dead Letter Office because it plays a big part on Bartleby’s character , such as not being the average worker, lost, and antisocial, by having Bartleby compared to a dead letter.