Digital manuscripts and electronic publishing

The publication of Vannevar Bush’s seminal paper, As we may think, in 1945 was closely followed by the invention of the electronic digital computer in 1948. In the following 50 years much of Bush’s vision has been realised by computer scientists. We can store vast amounts of data including speech and video in computers, and we can transmit them over networks. We can annotate the material with editorial notes and electronic cross references. However, our interaction with the material requires the use of a keyboard and mouse rather than the more natural pencil and paper. This paper describes how this problem is being addressed and will discuss its implications for scholars in the future.