English reading Gramsci scholars should be pleased to know that nearly all of the English translations of Gramsci's writings have recently become available in digital form. Last year ElecBook Classics, in association with Lawrence and Wishart, published six major Gramscian texts on a single CD-ROM. The CD-ROM includes, Selections from Political Writings 1910-1920, Selections from Political Writings 1921-1926, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Further Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Selections from Cultural Writings, and Roger Simonís Gramsci's Political Thought: An Introduction. All of the texts are complete, unabridged versions, produced in the Adobe Acrobat format.
There is no doubt that this will become an important research tool for Gramscian scholars. With the texts in the Acrobat format, a user can view, search, and print each text or portions of each text. There is no longer any need to consult an index. The "Find" tool within Acrobat works very well. A user just needs to type in a word or term and Acrobat will find every instance in which the word or term appears. For example, if you want to find every instance in which Gramsci discusses Manzoni, you just need to click on the "find" tool, type in "Manzoni," and Acrobat will do the rest of the work. Acrobat also offers cut, copy, and paste functions. This means that it is possible to highlight a certain amount of text with your mouse, copy it, and then paste it in a different document. For example, if you are writing a paper and want to quote a lengthy amount of text, you just need to copy the text from Acrobat and paste it in your word processor.
ElecBooks has done a nice job of presenting and organizing the texts. The texts are composed in a nice looking font that is easy to read and is adjustable to different sizes. It is possible to view one complete page on the screen, in which the font is small, and it is possible to adjust the size of the page, making the size of the font larger or smaller. All of the texts are organized in a "library," which easily allows a user to switch from book to book and to choose different sections and chapters within a book. Unfortunately, however, the page numbers within the electronic books do not correspond to the page numbers within the original paper bound books. [END PAGE 15] For example, in the original paper edition of Further Selections from the Prison Notebooks, edited by Derek Boothman, the section on "The Philosophy of Benedetto Croce" begins on page 362, whereas in the electronic version of the book the same section begins on page 516. This can be somewhat of an inconvenience if one wants to make references from the electronic book to the actual book. This can also be a problem if one wants to quote the text and only has access to the electronic version. Although the electronic version is convenient to use, I believe the actual books will continue to be the most common forms of reference.
The only other problem with the CD-ROM is the artwork. At the beginning of each electronic text, there is a title page with an image of Gramsci superimposed over another image, and in five out of the six instances Gramsci's image is superimposed over fascist or Soviet imagery. For example, on the title page of the Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Gramsci's image is superimposed over a picture of Mussolini and Hitler giving the Nazi salute. Although Gramsci lived during a period of fascism and Stalinism, he was clearly not a fascist or Stalinist, and the artwork on the CD-ROM may give the viewer a different impression. ElecBooks could have chosen more appropriate artwork or just copied the covers from the original books.
ElecBooks has also done a nice job of making the CD-ROM compatible with all major computer systems. The Adobe Acrobat files can be viewed on Windows 3.1/95/98/NT, Macintosh, and Unix systems, and ElecBooks has included the Adobe Acrobat program for each system on the CD-ROM. So if you do not have Acrobat on your computer, there is no need worry, the CD-ROM comes with it.
Hopefully other publishers of Gramsci's writings will take notice of this publication and produce similar CD-ROMs. The possibilities for such projects are endless. Given that a single CD- ROM can store up to 650 megabytes of information, it is possible to fit all of Gramsci's pre-prison writings, prison notebooks, and letters in both Italian and English all on one CD-ROM.
The Gramsci CD-ROM is normally priced at $49.95 (£29.95), but it is currently on sale for $39.95 (£24.95). In order to ensure the special price, IGS members should mention the International Gramsci Society in their orders.
ElecBooks Classics, 20 Cambridge Drive; London, SE12 8AJ, UK
Also available on the web: http://www.elecbook.com/