Book Surfers Treasure IslandThe Literary Platform has a look at a new publishing project called “Booksurfers”. Booksurfers e-books consist of classic, public-domain works (such as Treasure Island or The Wizard of Oz) paired and hypertextually interlinked with a newer work based on the older one.

The article goes into further detail about the ways the narrative is interwoven, and how the publishing company behind it hopes that this will get kids more interested in reading the classics. But more interesting to me is the way that this shows, once again, that there is still current value in the public domain—even for books hundreds of years old.

And it also shows why we should make every effort to insure that public domain continues growing, for the benefit of future generations who could do the same with the copyrighted books of today. Hopefully sooner or later Congress will get the message.

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