Usage

* Enormous global use of online texts and downloadable ebooks -- March 2002 saw about 5 million documents delivered to 1.1 million visitors -- predominantly K12 and general public users.

* E-texts and e-books are the most used single library service; in March 2002, there was an average of 5,930 daily visits to the physical libraries on Grounds, but 37,000 daily visits to the E-Text Center

* 56% of the total library web traffic is to etexts and etext-supported projects, or about twice the average usage as VIRGO, our online catalog

Collections

* 70,000 texts, mostly online, including history, literature, philosophy, religion, history of science. Languages include Latin, Apache, Japanese, and Chinese.

10,000 texts publicly accessible

8,000 commercially-licensed titles delivered to the entire VIVA consortium (39 state-assisted colleges and universities within Virginia)

* 350,000 related images : 164,000 of them publicly available, including rare books, manuscripts, and book illustrations

* Over 8.5 million Microsoft Reader and Palm Pilot ebooks shipped August 8, 2000 - December, 2002: 2,000 titles, all in English; some illustrated.

K12 Service and International Outreach

In the past year (2001-02) we provided ebooks and related material for scholarly, pedagogical, and pleasure reading to users from 190 different countries ranging from North American and European countries, Japan, and Australia, through Tonga, Latvia, Christmas Island, Kazakhstan, and Qatar, to Macao and the Vatican.

For a full list of registered international domains we have not yet reached, click here.

Our largest user communities are high-school students and teachers from all over the world, followed by the general public. See a selection of their feedback.

Partnerships and Services

Award-winning faculty and student projects

The Center's staff trains users and oversee dozens of projects that make use of (and contribute to) our holdings, including items devoted to Mark Twain; Jefferson; the Civil War; Salem Witch Trials; Walt Whitman, new religious movements; Plymouth Colony; Flowerdew Hundred plantation; Abraham Cowley; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Chinese classical literature; Coleridge; and Apache language materials. More information

Publications

The Etext Center supports a variety of online journals, bibliographies, university papers, and other publications, including 50 years of Studies in Bibliography, Essays in History, The Board of Visitors Minutes, and Thomas Jefferson: a bibliography of writings about him: 1826-1997 [ongoing]. More information

Current areas of activity and research

Widespread searching across SGML and XML databases, as well as within them [NSF funded]

Large-scale rare books scanning [Mellon Foundation funded]

XML-based Ebook technologies for new ways to deliver our content

Print On Demand technologies

Non-Western character sets online and in ebook, specifically Japanese, Chinese, and Apache

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/kwikfact.html