Great Books Programs

A number of educational institutions are offering "Great Books" programs -- i.e. reading lists intended to promote a deeper understanding of our cultural heritage through a reading of the significant works of the past. Among these are:

St. John's College
Great Books Program at Malaspina: At first glance, this is a rather ugly site, but a little browsing reveals it to be extraordinarily complex and actually well organised.
http://www.mala.bc.ca/%7Emcneil/background.htx
Mercer University: "consists of an eight semester course sequence, which engages students from their freshman through their senior years. The first seven courses in the sequence are organized chronologically under general cultural rubrics. The sequence concludes in the mid-twentieth century. The strong emphasis is on foundational texts in the Western tradition ..."
http://www.mercer.edu/gbk/index.html
Thomas Aquinas College

A number of other sites provide lists of what they consider to be the "great books":

Great Books Index: A personal effort to index etext versions of the great books, based on the Encycopedia Britannica list.
http://www.mirror.org/books/gb.home.html
Western Canon University: "... where the professors are the Great Books of the Western Heritage, the lecture halls extend throughout the watery globe, and the daily homework assignment is to live one's life in the context of the Greats."
http://www.westerncanon.com/
Great Books Lists: Robert Teeter has collected a number of "lists" of Great Books, and includes Eastern and World Canons.
http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/greatbks.html
Access The Great Books: "... a compilation of 240 great authors and their works." This is a stylish site with links to texts elsewhere, plus links to Britannica for information on each author.
http://www.anova.org/
Reading Rat (in Terrence Berres's Virtual Study): Useful page listing what to read, where to find it, and why.
http://www.execpc.com/~berrestr/read.html