Produced by Al Haines
NEF, University of Toronto & Project Gutenberg, 2008
Copyright © 2008 Marie Lebert
This long article is dated May 2008. With many thanks to the great people who
helped me, especially Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, and Russon
Wooldridge, founder of NEF. All the mistakes are mine - my mother tongue is not
English, but French. This article is also available in French: Le Projet
Gutenberg (1971-2008).
1. Overview
2. A Bet Since 1971
3. The Method
4. Shared Proofreading
5. Becoming Multingual
6. Public Domain vs. Copyright
7. From the Past to the Future
8. Chronology
9. Stats
10. Links
August 1997: 1,000 books; April 2002: 5,000 books; October 2003: 10,000 books;January 2005: 15,000 books; December 2006: 20,000 books; April 2008: 25,000books.
In July 1971, Michael Hart created Project Gutenberg with the goal of makingavailable for free, and electronically, literary works belonging to publicdomain. A pioneer site in a number of ways, Project Gutenberg was the firstinformation provider on the internet and is the oldest digital library. When theinternet became popular, in the mid-1990s, the project got a boost and aninternational dimension. The number of electronic books rose from 1,000 (inAugust 1997) to 5,000 (in April 2002), 10,000 (in October 2003), 15,000 (inJanuary 2005), 20,000 (in December 2006) and 25,000 (in April 2008), with acurrent production rate of around 340 new books each month. With 55 languagesand 40 mirror sites around the world, books are being downloaded by the tens ofthousands every day. Project Gutenberg promotes digitization in “text format”,meaning that a book can be copied, indexed, searched, analyzed and compared withother books. Contrary to other formats, the files are accessible forlow-bandwidth use. The main source of new Project Gutenberg eBooks isDistributed Proofreaders, launched in October 2000 by Charles Franks to help inthe digitizing of books from public domain.
= In a Few Words
If the print book is 5 centuries and a half old, the electronic book is only 37years old. It is born with Project Gutenberg, created by Michael Hart in July1971 to make available for free electronic versions of literary books belongingto public domain. A pioneer site in a number of ways, Project Gutenberg was thefirst information provider on an embryonic internet and is the oldest digitallibrary. Long considered by its critics as impossible on a large scale, ProjectGutenberg counted 25,000 books in April 2008, with tens of thousands downloadsdaily. To this day, nobody has done a better job of putting the world'sliterature at everyone's disposal. And to create a vast network of volunteersall over the world, without wasting people's skills or energy.
During the fist twenty years, Michael Hart himself keyed in the first hundredbooks, with the occasional help of others from time to time. When the internetbecame popular, in the mid-1990s, the project got a boost and an internationaldimension. Michael still typed and scanned in books, but now coordinated thework