Project Gutenberg News

In 1985 when Gary Kildall, IBM’s first choice before Bill Gates to design their PC’s operating system a few years earlier, came out with the first electronic encyclopedia, who would figure it would be only a quarter of a century before print encyclopedias faded from the limelight to join vinyl records and dinosaurs?

$999 would buy you an external Sony CD drive and Grolier’s CD– pretty much the same price as the paper encyclopedias, but with the option of putting any number of CDs in the drive.

This was only a year after the famous “1984″ Super Bowl ad that ran only once and changed Super Bowl ads forever.

It was only a year after IBM offered the AT. Continue Reading »

It’s all over for those hefty paper encyclopedias.

No less an authority than The New York Times tells us it is time to “Start Writing the Eulogies for Print Encyclopedias,” that it is all over other than rolling out the last few editions of some last few hard-boiled Luddites who insist on paper encyclopedias, at a price that could easily buy you a decent used car.

$1500 would buy you an encyclopedia when I was a kid, and that’s not so much less than we paid for our first brand new $2100 car.

Obviously this pricing has taken a beating to remain competitive with electronic resources, as I just clicked on an ad for a 2007 Britannica, there doesn’t seem to be a 2008, and got three kinds labeled as follows: Continue Reading »

We’ve just posted the 100th eBook. It’s from 1904, seems not to have been reprinted, and is a very interesting account of Toronto’s legal establishment in the 19th century: it’s a rather spectacular addition to the collection. Here’s the description from the website:

2008/03/25: As our 100th eBook, we’ve chosen this beautifully illustrated history of Toronto’s lawyers and judiciary - A true rarity and a delight to read, packed with anecdotes. You may end up thinking that the history of Toronto is the history of its lawyers!

Hamilton, James Cleland (1836-1907) [Canadian lawyer]
Osgoode Hall - Reminiscences of the Bench and Bar (1904) [History]

Rescuing excellent titles like this from undeserved oblivion is one of the great pleasures of having a Literary Archive.

Forwarded from Mark Akrigg of PG Canada

After all these years of saying free eBooks were anathema to the Olde Boye Networke of the publishing world….

The publishers are finally realizing that when eBooks are given away free of charge actually increase paper sales–not that there weren’t any number of academic studies and articles saying this from the very beginning.

So, if any Project Gutenberg volunteers ever needed kinds of vindication, it doesn’t get much better than this…at least until we find there are more eBook going out for consumption than paper books….

Again my HUGE thanks to ALL Project Gutenberg volunteers!

Michael S. Hart
Founder
Project Gutenberg

Tor Books Is Giving Away E-Books

Tor Books is launching a new site and running a campaign in which they are giving away e-books (free as in beer) until the site goes live. To get in on the deal, fill out the form at their site, and each week you will receive a newsletter containing links to download a new book. The first two books are Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson followed by Old Man’s War by John Scalzi. Scalzi’s site says: ‘My understanding is that they don’t have DRM on them. Or at least, mine isn’t supposed to have, and I don’t think they’re planning mine to be special in that regard.

The above is from the Slashdot.org article of the same name.

This only a day or so after HarperCollins appear in the NYTimes doing the same thing.

A Million Books Scanned at U. of Michigan — and Counting

Librarians at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor threw themselves a party on Friday to celebrate a milestone in their ambitious effort to scan every single book in the collection. They scanned the one millionth book, leaving just 6.5-million to go.

Most of the scanning has been done as part of the library’s controversial deal with Google. The search giant is working with dozens of major libraries around the world to scan the full text of books to add to its index. But Michigan is one of the only institutions to agree to scan every one of its holdings — even those that are still covered by copyright.

Read the full article here.

Every year I write my predictions, hopes and fears, but this year I think we can all agree that these predictions cross boundaries, concern advances, and declines, in both the technology and social world orders that are far beyond anything I previously predicted.

This year’s predictions include “personal libraries” on “personal computers” to rival the largest libraries in the world; USB 3.0– which will reduce overnight data copying and backups to ONE HOUR; and very inexpensive terabyte drives.

Prediction #1: The “Personal Computer” as “Personal Library”
Prediction #2: USB 3.0 Will Change The World of Copies/Backups
Prediction #3: USB 3.0 Terabyte Drives Will Do More Than. . . .
Prediction #4: Is “The Digital Divide” Half Empty Or Half Full?
Prediction #5: Rethinking “The Digital Divide”. . .More or Less

The World’s Largest Libraries, Will eLibraries Be Counted? Continue Reading »

“Acting without a vote, the Assembly, also recognizing that the United Nations pursues multilingualism as a means of promoting, protecting and preserving diversity of languages and cultures globally, emphasized the paramount importance of the equality of the Organization’s six official languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish).”

Note the lack of languages from India and Africa, but the inclusion of previous world powers of Spain, France, and Russia, and only one currently rising superpower, China.

This reflects a greater concern with political power than serving the actual general world population, where India, Indonesia, Africa, Pakistan, etc., reflect some one third of the entire world population without their languages in the official representation of the United Nations.

General Assembly
GA/10592
Department of Public Information • News and Media Division • New York

Sixty-first General Assembly
Plenary
96th Meeting (PM)

GENERAL ASSEMBLY PROCLAIMS 2008 INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF LANGUAGES, IN EFFORT TO PROMOTE UNITY IN DIVERSITY, GLOBAL UNDERSTANDING

The General Assembly this afternoon, recognizing that genuine multilingualism promotes unity in diversity and international understanding, proclaimed 2008 the International Year of Languages.

Acting without a vote, the Assembly, also recognizing that the United Nations pursues multilingualism as a means of promoting, protecting and preserving diversity of languages and cultures globally, emphasized the paramount importance of the equality of the Organization’s six official languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish). Continue Reading »

This last week the combined PG projects hit the 25,000th eBook. The book that was posted is;

Audio: The Essays of Francis Bacon by Francis Bacon                    22978
    [Audio reading by Carl Vonnoh, III ]
    [Link: http://www.gutenberg.org/2/2/9/7/22978 ]
    [Files: 22978-readme.txt; 22978-index.html; 22978-mp3.mp3;
            22978-ogg.ogg; 22978-m4b.m4b; 22978-spx.spx ]

Thanks to Carl Vonnoh, III and Librivox (www.librivox.org)

This was posted by Joshua Hutchinson.

Also this week the eBook #23000 was posted. This was reserved and finally released as;

Orley Farm, by Anthony Trollope                                          23000
  [Link: http://www.gutenberg.org/2/3/0/0/23000 ]
  [Files: 23000.txt; 23000-8.txt; 23000-h.htm; ]
  [Clearance: 20070827140111trollope]

Posted by Joe Loewenstein.

Congratulations to everyone who helps provide PG with so many new books each week.

Here is a message from Michael Hart,

It would appear we have just now reached the 25,000th eBook produced by YOU!,
the Project Gutenberg volunters!!!!!!!

This includes:

PG of Australia
PG of Europe
PG of Canada

In addition, PG has received some 75,000 eBooks from the wide variety of eLibraries who donate to us from their production.

We are also looking for volunteers to help fledgling efforts to start Project Gutenberg sites in China, South America, Africa, and any other locations you would like.

Again, my HUGE thanks!!!!!!!

Michael S. Hart
Founder
Project Gutenberg

– Mike Cook [Ed]

In the PC Magazine just now coming out, “The Top 100″
web sites out of millions lists Project Gutenberg for being one of the best of the best Internet resources.

The Top 100 at pcmag.com

Project Gutenberg is among the very oldest electronic information providers in the world if not the oldest.

Tens of thousands of eBooks are available at PG sites

www.gutenberg.org

and

www.gutenberg.cc

as well as thousands more at the other PG sites in:

• Australia
• Europe
• Canada
• Portugal*

and new sites in progress in South America.

These student projects provide a real-world, hands-on opportunity to help bring this vast collection of new eBooks to a wider public, in more formats, with added functionality and usefullness.

* The gutenberg.org site has been translated into Portuguese. Portugal otherwise only has mirrors.

Einstein said that the most important decision you ever make is whether you live in a friendly universe or a hostile universe– in a positive universe or a negative universe.

This relates very strongly to what is perhaps the greatest idea I came up with in all my college years, which was that you make more difference in the world taking something good and making a better thing out of it than by undoing something bad. . . .

When we describe our heroes and superheroes, we often described them only in terms of the bad things they have undone.

Continue Reading »