Acknowledgements:

First, thanks to all the students whose hard work produced the data in the Bestsellers Database, and thanks to the many readers who have sent suggestions, corrections, and comments.

This project was first supported (in 1999) by a grant from the University of Virginia's Teaching + Technology Initiative. Under the auspices of that grant, evaluation, programming, and database design was contributed by Tom Kane and Charles Sligh (English Department, GS), Mike Thompson and JJ Tavernier (Computer Science, UG), John Ashenfelter and Yitna Firdiweck (TTI Program). Additional consultation on evaluative techniques was generously provided by Professor Walter F. Heinecke, Curry School of Education, Educational Evaluation Program.

The University of Virginia Libraries' Electronic Text Center, Digital Image Center, Reference Department, Special Collections, and Video Department have all provided generous assistance to the instructor and many students in this course during the years it has been taught at the University of Virginia--especially Bryson Clevenger, in the first Virginia iteration, and Xioaming Wang in the second. Thanks also to Jo Kibbee and staff at the Library of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, for similar assistance during the time that the course was being taught at the University of Illinois, and to Patrick Gamsby, Sarah Shoemaker, and Judy Pinnolis at Brandeis University, where the course was taught in 2014.

Documentation for the assignments has been contributed by Terry Belanger (University of Virginia, Book Arts Press) and by Marija Dalbello (Catholic University of America, School of Library and Information Science) and her students (Mike Bernier, Melissa Brall, Elizabeth Gettins-Avins, Donna Jacumin, Robert Kehoe, Stacie Larson, Katherine Margolis, Patricia O'Callaghan-Tamayo, Lisa Payne, Laura Sekela, and David Sukites).

This course uses HTML pages and forms originally designed and written by John Unsworth, a Mysql database originally set up by Oludotun Akinola (then from the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities), and perl scripts written by Oludotun Akinola and John Unsworth, and subsequently tweaked by Ian Rifkin. Additional technical support was provided by Pete Yadlowsky and Mark Manley at the University of Virginia, and by Ian Rifkin and Jim Lambert at Brandeis University. A major re-engineering of the course infrastructure was carried out a Brandeis University by Cliff Welch, and that version of the database was re-implemented at the University of Virginia (again!) by the Library's Xiaoming Wang.

The course materials and Mysql database were originally housed at Virginia on servers administered by Hamp Carruth and his Unix Systems Group, from 1998 until 2002. From 2003 to 2013, the database was housed on servers at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, and thanks go to Brynnen Owen and Amit Kumar for assistance with technical matters at UIUC. From 2014 to 2016, the database lived on servers run by Library and Technology Services at Brandeis University, administered by the Networks and Systems group, under the direction of Nick Ragusa. From 2016 on, the database is on Library infrastructure at the University of Virginia.

A version of this course has also been taught at Catholic University, by Maria Dalbello, as part of a graduate curriculum in Library Science.

If you have questions or comments, contact John Unsworth, Professor of English, University of Virginia, unsworth@virginia.edu