Harley Hahn Press Releases

Every day, there are countless press releases issued around the world. Very few of these documents are worth reading, let alone preserving for posterity.

However, seeing as I am an honest, objective chronicler of popular culture, I feel it is important to draw your attention to a small number of important press releases that otherwise might escape your attention.

Here are two such announcements, each of which celebrates a seminal event in the evolution of Western culture.

The first release was issued on Tuesday, May 14, 1996 (or "Yellow Pages Tuesday" as it is referred to by historians). It announces that, for the first time in history, an Internet book has sold 1,000,000 copies. The book was Harley Hahn's Internet Yellow Pages and, ultimately, it became the best-selling book of its type in the world.

View the press release... One million Yellow Pages books sold.

In an historical context, an Internet book selling 1,000,000 copies was an important achievement, because it showed that the Net had finally become an important and permanent part of our culture.

The second press release, from November, 2002, is an announcement from the library at the University of California at Santa Barbara: that their Special Collections Department had decided to collect a full set of all my work, including all my books.

The Special Collections Department maintains special archival facilities, with controlled temperature and humidity, to ensure that valuable material is preserved intact over many years.

View the press release... UCSB Library to collect Harley Hahn books.

The idea behind the collection is to create and preserve, for future historians and researchers, a permanent record of important texts dating from the early days of the Internet.

For example, put yourself in the shoes of a researcher 100 years from now. Think of how valuable it would be for you to have a full set of every edition of the Yellow Pages book. What a help it would be to understand the popular culture of the time.

Or, suppose you were a historian who wanted to study the workings of the early Internet. You would be able to read the original books in which I explain how the Internet and see what it was like to use the Net in "primitive times". I fully expect that, in the next century, there will be graduate students who will be using these books to research their Ph.D. dissertations.

Harley Hahn collection at the UCSB library

To read about the current edition of the Yellow Pages:

Harley Hahn's Internet Yellow Pages

For information about the most up-to-date book explaining how to use the Internet, see:

Harley Hahn's Internet Advisor