The Watermark, UMass Boston student literary magazine, 2004 (Carston Anderson)

Introduction

Let us say you, in your adventures as a student or a reader, come across an archive or a library of books. Let us also say that it makes claims of being official, mandated, or institutional, something along the lines of a special collections branch of a university archive, for example. It keeps its books in duplicate and makes PDF files available to you on occasion. This situation, while common enough, must be viewed by the engaged individual with some good-natured suspicion. After all, a PDF is not a book. And two exact copies of the same book might as well be one book. [Read more]