Copyright and Access

The Robert Pirsig Concordance is an independent scholarly research and reference tool. It is deliberately designed not to replace purchasing, borrowing, or reading Robert Pirsig’s books or related literature. The concordance is most useful to readers who already have access to the books and is of limited value to those who do not.

The concordance allows readers to search for words and phrases, compare their uses, examine limited surrounding context, and locate passages in published editions. It does not provide a continuous reading view, a table of contents for navigating the text, or ordinary forward-and-backward navigation from one page, chapter, or section to another.

Access to the text is organized entirely around individual search results. Each result initially displays only a small amount of surrounding context. Readers may deliberately expand that context, but the amount displayed remains capped.

In the book-page view, no more than six printed pages surrounding a search result can be displayed. Reaching that limit requires clicking Show a little more context three times. In the free-flowing text view, no more than twelve paragraphs can be displayed. Reaching that limit requires expanding the context aperture five times.

These limits are intended to provide enough context to identify a passage, understand its immediate setting, and locate it in the reader’s own edition without creating a practical substitute for the book.

Passages are presented to support identification, citation, commentary, close reading, comparison, scholarship, and research. Readers are encouraged to purchase authorized editions or obtain them through a library.

Questions or concerns about the presentation of copyrighted material may be sent to davidlong@unr.edu.