Bartleby.com
Bartleby.com was an electronic text archive, headquartered in Los Angeles and named after Herman Melville's story "Bartleby, the Scrivener." It was founded under the name "Project Bartleby" in January 1993 as a collection of classic literature on the website of Columbia University. In February 1994, they published the first classic book in HTML, Whitman's Leaves of Grass.[1] It is now a commercial website operated by Barnes & Noble.[2]
| Headquarters | United States |
|---|---|
| Owner | Barnes & Noble |
| URL | Original website Current website |
| Commercial | yes |
| Launched | 1993 |
History
It was founded under the name "Project Bartleby" in January 1993. In 1997, the name was changed to "The New Bartleby Library" and it moved to its own domain, bartleby.com, where it continued to publish highly accurate transcriptions. In September 1999 Bartleby.com was incorporated and started to focus on reference works, including the 6th edition of the Columbia Encyclopedia.
In June 2009, licensed reference works from Columbia University Press and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt were removed from the site "due to financial and usage considerations." By January 2013, on its twentieth anniversary, more than one billion pages had been accessed.[3]
In August 2017, Bartleby.com was acquired by Barnes & Noble Education in its purchase of Student Brands, which had bought the site in December 2016.[2] The current offerings include bartleby learn, featuring online textbook access and a Q&A service; bartleby write, an essay writing tool; and bartleby tutor, featuring online tutoring.[4] Its archives of fiction, poetry, and other content remain accessible online.
References
- "People". Columbia University Record. Columbia University. June 12, 1998. Retrieved 2013-06-09.
- "Barnes & Noble Education Acquires Student Brands". BusinessWire. Retrieved 2018-04-18.
- van Leeuwen, Steven H. "Welcome to Bartleby.com". Bartleby.com. Retrieved 2011-01-29.
- "bartleby | Home Page". www.bartleby.com. Retrieved 2019-11-06.