In the Summer of 1998, Professor Emeritus of the UMass Art History Department J. Leonard Benson offered the UMass Amherst Libraries publication rights to a set of two scholarly works, entitled Greek Color Theory and the Four Elements and Greek Sculpture and the Four Elements. In accepting these monograph-length manuscripts, the UMass Amherst Libraries recognized an opportunity to explore the new role of electronic publisher that other research libraries, such as the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Virginia, have entered.

The two texts, published in May 2000 by the Digital Initiatives Team, added a new and valuable resource to the Libraries' collections while allowing the Digital Initiatives Team to investigate new technologies that may well become central to information organization, access and exchange in a Web environment.

In 2007, the works were converted to PDF format and added to ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. The original website can be found here.

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