EServer.org

[2] Martha L. Brogan and Daphnée Rentfrow wrote in 2005 that it had "more than 200 active members, including editors of an eclectic mix of 45 discrete 'collections' (Web sites), which 'publish' more than 32,000 works.

The EServer was founded in 1990, when a group of graduate students set up their office computer in "Trailer H" on the Carnegie Mellon University campus network to permit them to collaborate with one another.

In 1991, with the addition of more disk space, it became an Internet network server designed to provide public access (via FTP, telnet and Gopher to literary research, criticism, novels, and writings from various humanities disciplines.

Quick turnover, high-visibility marketing campaigns for bestsellers, and corporate "superstore" bookstores have all made it less common for unique and older texts to be published.

Some of the texts were published under Creative Commons licenses, though many were distributed under an older model, which preserves the copyright in the author but permits reading and linking but not redistribution, except under specific limited conditions.