Skip the explanation and go straight to the table of contents
This Web page shows the table of contents of our Welsh CD. Internal links will take you to the various sections, but you cannot get to the books themselves here on the Web. For that you need the CD.
This CD, with 24 books, was compiled by Richard Seltzer. In addition to works of history and literature it includes the 2006 CIA World Factbook. The books themselves are in the public domain and in plain text format. You can copy them onto your hard drive for convenience, or make an archival copy of the CD, as backup in case of damage to the original. But the collection and its indexes, created for your convenience, are under copyright. Please contact us first if you are interested in making copies of this CD for commercial purposes. seltzer@samizdat.com
This Welsh CD, with 24 classic books, is available for $19 at our online store.
For details about this publishing service, check the readme document. You can contact us at seltzer@samizdat.com, B&R Samizdat Express, 33 Gould St., West Roxbury, MA 02132. 617-469-2269.
Teachers' and Students' Guide: Suggestions on how to get the most out of your books on CD ROM
The 46 books on this CD are in plain text format. You can copy them onto your hard drive for convenience, or make an archival copy of the CD, as backup in case of damage to the original.
These books are in plain text format. You can copy them onto your hard drive for convenience, or make an archival copy of the CD, as backup in case of damage to the original. You can open these books by clicking on the titles in this index page with your Web browser or a recent Windows-based word processor.
We publish plain text books (unencrypted) on CD, and we want to provide a simple way for customers and other interested people to share their insights into how to get the most out of this new way of reading and studying. To do so we have set up an email discussion group at Yahoo. All are welcome to join and to post here, but I'll manage this group in "moderated" style, filtering messages before they go out to the whole group, to control the volume of the messages and to make sure that they are on-topic. Tips and information that would be helpful to people you have plain text books on CD are welcome -- including examples of how you are using yours, suggestions for improvement, suggestions for future CDs, and useful/interesting texts found on the Web that should be included in future CDs. To subscribe, go to the discussion group Web site at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/plaintextbooksoncd or send a blank email to plaintextbooksoncd-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
How to install and use the free ReadPlease software included on this CD
Click here if you would like to install this software. When you click
on that link, you will be asked wheter you want to save it on
your computer or just run it. Choose Save -- it will only take about
10 Mbytes; so choose Save. Then select which version you
want to install and the directory that you'd like to put it in. When
the rapid, automatic installation is done, you will be able to
open ReadPlease by clicking on an icon on your desktop.
When running ReadPlease, click on File, then Open, and browse to the
texts you are interested on the CD (or any other text
file you have). Click on Play and it will start "reading" the book
aloud to you. Highlight a chunk of text (of any size) with your
browser and then click on Selection, and it will read the text you
selected. Controls in the right column allow you to change the
speed of the voice (with a sliding bar), change the font size (with
a sliding bar), and switch among four different voices (with the
right and left arrows).
When you run ReadPlease, you see the text, with yellow highlighting
moving from one word to the next, while you hear that
same text. And you can at any time edit the text in the video window.
Just position your cursor, click you mouse, and type
whatever you like -- for instance, annotation or marks to show where
you last stopped reading. Then save the edited file on
your hard drive.
Please keep in mind that ReadPlease is their software not ours. They
are the experts on it. They have even better versions with
even clearer, more natural voices, which they sell. You can listen
to samples at their Web site www.readplease.com, where you can also see
detailed help files. And you can contact them at: ReadPlease Corporation,
121 Cherry Ridge Road, Thunder
Bay, ON, Canada P7G 1A7. Phone: 807-474-7702
Tips for using/enjoying the texts on this CD:
The easiest way to get started is to click on My Computer, then on your CD drive, then on index.html. (That should bring you to here, in Word or your Web browser, or WordPad or Notepad, depending on your computer's setup.)
From the index, click on an individual work to see the full text in your browser or in Word. Click "Back" in your browser to return here. Use the "find" function in your browser (under Edit/Find in both Netscape and IE) to find any word or phrase within a document.
When you stop reading, jot down the last phrase (a unique set of words) so you can search for that the next time you want to read and easily find the spot where you left off.
If you just want to read and if you have a large screen, use your browser and under View increase the type size to meet your taste.
If you just want to read and you have a small screen, try using WordPad or Word.
If you want to take notes while you read, first save the file on your hard drive, then open it in WordPad or Word, enter your notes with the text (making them distinctive with bold or italic or by enclosing them in brackets] as you go along, and save the entire file, with those changes, when you are done.
If you use Word, you can Select All [under Edit], and modify the font and type size (to make the letters larger and easier to read) [under Format and Font], and save the files on your hard drive [under File, Save As] with whatever changes you have made (including notes you made while reading).
In addition, we include a shareware program (courtesy of DLJ Software,
182 Maplewood Circle, Urbana, OH 43078.(513) 484-3992). This program, READIT.EXE,
was particularly designed for use by the blind, but it makes it very easy
for anyone to read and search plain text documents.
We will continue to add new books to this CD as they become available. To see the current contents on the Web, see www.samizdat.com/canadacd.html. For a list of recent updates (what we added and when), see www.samizdat.com/cdupdate.html If you buy a CD at the retail price of $19, you have the right to buy an upgraded version of the same CD for just $10, a maximum of four times per year. The "upgraded" version will contain all the texts, not just the new ones.
For details on all our offerings see http://www.samizdat.com/readme.html
You can buy these CDs at our online store at http://store.yahoo.com/samizdat
Note regarding copyright: On our "Classic Collections"
CDs, we include works published in the US before 1923, works from Australia
and Canada when the author died 50 years or more ago, and works from the
European Union (including the United Kingdom and Ireland) when the author
died 70 years or more ago. NB -- Due to The European Union's extension
of copyright by 20 years to 70 years after the death of the author many
works which had been in the public domain under the previous law are now
once again under copyright. Hence we are unable to include on our CDs some
popular writers whose works are still readily available over the Internet.
Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)
You can contact us at seltzer@samizdat.com, B&R Samizdat Express, 33 Gould St., West Roxbury, MA 02132. 617-469-2269.
For details about this publishing service, check the readme document.
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