In this environment, the newest form of literacy has begun to emerge. Hypertext allows for authors to reason and to write in a whole new way. Footnotes no longer interfere with the flow of text. A click displays a fuller explanation of a concept, eliminating tangential argument. Links carry the reader not to a reference, but to the work on which the author builds his or her thesis.
Readers select their own paths through a discipline.
Search engines bring passages together in ways never possible before. Hypertextual editions of physical texts allow a researcher to study a subject or document deeply, to perform music with a hymn, to illustrate themes with art and motion, to understand new concepts and to gain a fuller appreciation for the work before them. Project Wittenberg's Electronic Library of Lutheranism will be a beginning to a hypertextual treasury of the works of Martin Luther and those who follow in his tradition of Christian faith. It will be an enduring witness to these people and a doorway into a new understanding of our place within today's world, and, for Lutherans, within the faith passed down to them from Christ to Luther to this very day. General Assumptions and Principles 1.