Gregory M. Lamb in the Christian Science Monitor:
Computers and the Internet are changing the way people read. Thus far, search engines and hyperlinks, those underlined words or phrases that when clicked take you to a new Web page, have turned the online literary voyage into a kind of U-pick island-hop. Far more is in store.
Take “Hamlet.” A decade ago, a student of the Shakespeare play would read the play, probably all the way through, and then search out separate commentaries and analyses.
Enter hamletworks.org.
When completed, the site will help visitors comb through several editions of the play, along with 300 years of commentaries by a slew of scholars. Readers can click to commentaries linked to each line of text in the nearly 3,500-line play. The idea is that some day, anyone wanting to study “Hamlet” will find nearly all the known scholarship brought together in a cohesive way that printed books cannot.
More here. [Thanks to Laura Claridge.]