3. English Literature: Metapages and Text Archives

Next, the application of the theoretical ideas to Internet sources is to be examined. This means discussing the extent to which WWW resources employ the full potential of hypertext: its nonlinear structure, decentral organisation, and the possibility of submitting additions and contributions to the system. Landow claims that "hypertext systems (...) allow nonsequential reading and thinking".⁷⁴ This statement is in concordance with Kuhlen's ideas concerning 'cognitive plausibility'⁷⁵ because one can choose individual ways of accessing information and acquiring knowledge.
Since the resources under scrutiny are part of a large hypertext environment, they also show the characteristics of the new medium. The users are not bound to a fixed order but can find their own paths through the system. The main difference between metapages and text archives is that metapages offer a great variety of links to external sources using the whole Internet as a base of information and allowing unlimited possibilities of navigation. Text archives, on the other hand, usually have their own internal databases which contain documents that have to be read sequentially, i.e. the user's facilities of moving around are restricted to a given structure. Introducing a text into the environment of the Internet poses another problem, because this process changes its textuality. A piece of writing which was intended by its author to stand on its own can now become part of a web of annotations and references.
In an archive, texts constitute a centre whereas metapages have only a home page serving as central starting point. In this regard, it is helpful to be familiar with the differences between the terms page, home page and site (also website). A page is a hypertext/hypermedia document, a home page is the first page of a service, and a (web-) site contains all the pages that can be accessed from the home page.⁷⁶
Some sites, such as Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet,⁷⁷ offer a mixture of metapage and text archive. They hold texts in an internal database but provide additional links to other electronic works by the author in question. These services also supply links to secondary sources such as bibliographical and biographical data, criticism, and links to other metapages.
Most of the currently available metapages and text archives are read-only hypertext systems because one cannot enter contributions directly on the page, but has to take the diversion of sending an email to the webmaster. Metapages offer free admission to the material which they contain. Some text archives require subscriptions and fees, for instance Literature Online (LION),⁷⁸ and archives such as the Electronic Text Center⁷⁹ at the University of Virginia provide full access to their textbases only for local students and academic staff, but offer a few texts to the general public.