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Project Gutenberg
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Established 1971
Collection size Over 24,000
Director Michael S. Hart
Website http://www.gutenberg.org

Project Gutenberg, abbreviated as PG, is a volunteer effort to digitize, archive and distribute cultural works. Year 1971 ( MCMLXXI) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display full calendar of the 1971 Gregorian calendar. Michael Stern Hart (b 1947 in Tacoma Washington) is an American best known as the founder of Project Gutenberg which makes electronic books Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning "to cultivate" generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Year 1971 ( MCMLXXI) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display full calendar of the 1971 Gregorian calendar. Michael Stern Hart (b 1947 in Tacoma Washington) is an American best known as the founder of Project Gutenberg which makes electronic books A digital library is a Library in which collections are stored in digital formats (as opposed to print Microform, or other media and accessible by computers [1] Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books. The public domain is a range of abstract materials &ndash commonly referred to as Intellectual property &ndash which are not owned or controlled by anyone A Book is a set or collection of written printed illustrated or blank sheets made of Paper, Parchment, or other material usually fastened together The project tries to make these as free as possible, in long-lasting, open formats that can be used on almost any computer. As of December 2007, Project Gutenberg claimed over 24,000 items in its collection. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Project Gutenberg is affiliated with many projects that are independent organizations which share the same ideals, and have been given permission to use the Project Gutenberg trademark.

Wherever possible, the releases are available in plain text, but other formats are included, such as HTML. A text file (sometimes spelled "textfile" is a kind of Computer file that is structured as a sequence of lines. HTML, an initialism of HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant Markup language for Web pages It provides a means to describe the structure The majority of releases are in English language, but many non-English works are also available. English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States There are multiple affiliated projects that are providing additional content, including regional-based or language-specific works. Project Gutenberg is also closely affiliated with Distributed Proofreaders, an internet-based community for proof-reading scanned texts. Distributed Proofreaders (commonly abbreviated as DP or PGDP) is a project to support the development of E-texts for Project Gutenberg.

Contents

History

Project Gutenberg was started by Michael Hart in 1971. Michael Stern Hart (b 1947 in Tacoma Washington) is an American best known as the founder of Project Gutenberg which makes electronic books Hart, a student at the University of Illinois, obtained access to a Xerox Sigma V mainframe computer in the university's Materials Research Lab. This article is about the flagship campus For other uses and locations of University of Illinois, see University of Illinois (disambiguation The University of SDS Sigma-5 was a 32-bit computer that was introduced by the Xerox company in 1965 Mainframes (often colloquially referred to as Big Iron) are Computers used mainly by large organizations for critical applications typically bulk data Through friendly operators, he received an account with a virtually unlimited amount of computer time; its value at that time has since been variously estimated at $100,000 or $100,000,000. [2] Hart has said he wanted to "give back" this gift by doing something that could be considered to be of great value. His initial goal was to make the 10,000 most consulted books available to the public at little or no charge, and to do so by the end of the 20th century. [3]

This particular computer was one of the 15 nodes on the computer network that would become the Internet. A node ( Latin nodus, ‘knot’ is a critical element of any Computer network. A computer network is a group of interconnected Computers. Networks may be classified according to a wide variety of characteristics The Internet is a global system of interconnected Computer networks Hart believed that computers would one day be accessible to the general public and decided to make works of literature available in electronic form for free. He used a copy of the United States Declaration of Independence in his backpack, and this became the first Project Gutenberg e-text. The United States Declaration of Independence is a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4 1776 announcing that the thirteen American colonies then An e-text (from " electronic text " sometimes written as etext) is generally any Text-based information that is available in a digitally He named the project after Johannes Gutenberg, the fifteenth century German printer who propelled the movable type printing press revolution. Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg ( 1398 &ndash February 3, 1468) was a German Goldsmith and printer who is credited Movable type is the system of Printing and Typography that uses movable components to reproduce the elements of a document (usually individual letters or punctuation A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a medium (such as paper or cloth thereby transferring an image

By the mid-1990s, Hart was running Project Gutenberg from Illinois Benedictine College. Benedictine University is a private Catholic university located in Lisle Illinois. More volunteers had joined the effort. All of the text was entered manually up until 1989 when image scanners and optical character recognition software improved and became more widely available, which made book scanning more feasible. Historical precedent Scanners can be considered the successors of early telephotography input devices consisting of a rotating drum with a single Photodetector at Optical character recognition, usually abbreviated to OCR, is the Mechanical or electronic translation of Images of handwritten typewritten Book scanning is the process of converting physical Books into digital images or electronic books (e-books via image scanning [4] Hart later came to an arrangement with Carnegie Mellon University, which agreed to administer Project Gutenberg's finances. Carnegie Mellon University (also known as CMU) is a private Research University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United As the volume of e-texts increased, volunteers began to take over the project's day-to-day operations that Hart had run.

Pietro Di Miceli, an Italian volunteer, developed and administered the first Project Gutenberg website and started the development of the Project online Catalog. In his ten years in this role (1994–2004), the Project web pages won a number of awards, often being featured in "best of the Web" listings, and contributing to the project's popularity. [5]

Recent developments

In 2000, a non-profit corporation, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, Inc. A non-profit organization ( abbreviated "NPO" also "not-for-profit" is a legally constituted Organization whose objective is to support or engage was chartered in Mississippi to handle the project's legal needs. Mississippi ( is a state located in the Deep South of the United States Donations to it are tax-deductible. A tax deduction or a tax-deductible expense affects a taxpayer's Income tax. Long-time Project Gutenberg volunteer Gregory Newby became the foundation's first CEO. A chief executive officer ( CEO) or chief executive is typically the highest-ranking corporate officer ( executive) or administrator [6]

Charles Franks also founded Distributed Proofreaders (DP) in 2000, which allowed the proofreading of scanned texts to be distributed among many volunteers over the Internet. Distributed Proofreaders (commonly abbreviated as DP or PGDP) is a project to support the development of E-texts for Project Gutenberg. Distributed Proofreaders (commonly abbreviated as DP or PGDP) is a project to support the development of E-texts for Project Gutenberg. This effort greatly increased the number and variety of texts being added to Project Gutenberg, as well as making it easier for new volunteers to start contributing. DP became officially affiliated with Project Gutenberg in 2002. [7] As of 2007, the 10,000+ DP-contributed books comprised almost half of the nearly 24,000 books in Project Gutenberg. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century.

Starting in 2004, an improved online catalog made Project Gutenberg content easier to browse, access and hyperlink. In computing a hyperlink is a Reference or Navigation element in a Document to another Section of the same document or to another Project Gutenberg is now hosted by ibiblio at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ( UNC, North Carolina, or simply Carolina) is a public, Coeducational Research

Scope of collection

Growth of Project Gutenberg publications from 1993 until 2007.
Growth of Project Gutenberg publications from 1993 until 2007.

As of December 2007, Project Gutenberg claimed over 24,000 items in its collection, with an average of over fifty new e-books being added each week. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. An e-book (for electronic book: also ebook) is the Digital media equivalent of a conventional printed Book. [8] These are primarily works of literature from the Western cultural tradition. Literature is the Art of written works Literally translated the word means "acquaintance with letters" (from Latin littera letter Western culture (sometimes equated with Western Civilization) are terms which are used to refer to Cultures of European origin In addition to literature such as novels, poetry, short stories and drama, Project Gutenberg also has cookbooks, reference works and issues of periodicals. A cookbook is a Book that contains information on Cooking, and/or a list of Recipes It may also contain information on ingredient origin freshness This article is about a kind of publication Reference work may also refer to the work that librarians perform at a Library reference desk. [9] The Project Gutenberg collection also has a few non-text items such as audio files and music notation files.

Most releases are in English, but there are also significant numbers in many other languages. As of July 2007, the non-English languages most represented are (in order): French (1,053 files), German (451), Finnish (396), Dutch (279) and Spanish (155). French ( français,) is a Romance language spoken around the world by 118 million people as a native language and by about 180 to 260 million people The German language (de ''Deutsch'') is a West Germanic language and one of the world's major languages. Finnish ( or suomen kieli) is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland (92% As of 2006) and by ethnic Finns outside Dutch ( is a West Germanic language spoken by around 24 million people 22 million of which are from the Netherlands, Belgium and Suriname [1]

Whenever possible, Gutenberg releases are available in plain text, mainly using US-ASCII character encoding but frequently extended to ISO-8859-1. A text file (sometimes spelled "textfile" is a kind of Computer file that is structured as a sequence of lines. American Standard Code for Information Interchange ( ASCII) A character encoding consists of a code that pairs a sequence of characters from a given character set (sometimes incorrectly referred to as Code page ISO 8859-1, more formally cited as ISO/IEC 8859-1 is part 1 of ISO/IEC 8859, a standard Character encoding of the Latin alphabet. Besides being copyright-free, the requirement for a Latin-text version of the release has been a criterion of Michael Hart's since the founding of Project Gutenberg, as he believes this is the format most likely to be readable in the extended future. The text is wrapped at 65-70 characters and paragraphs are separated by a double-line break. Although this makes the release available to anybody with a text-reader, a drawback of this format is the lack of markup and the resulting relatively bland appearance. [10]

Other formats may be released as well when submitted by volunteers. The most common non-ASCII format is HTML, which allows markup and illustrations to be included. HTML, an initialism of HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant Markup language for Web pages It provides a means to describe the structure Some project members and users have requested more advanced formats, believing them to be much easier to read. But some formats that are not easily editable, such as PDF, are generally not considered to fit in with the goals of Project Gutenberg (although a few have been added to the collection). For years, there has been discussion of using some type of XML, although progress on that has been slow. Don't change "Extensible"

Ideals

Michael Hart said in 2004, "The mission of Project Gutenberg is simple: 'To encourage the creation and distribution of ebooks. '"[11][12] His goal is, "to provide as many e-books in as many formats as possible for the entire world to read in as many languages as possible. "[1] Likewise, a project slogan is to "break down the bars of ignorance and illiteracy", because its volunteers aim to continue spreading public literacy and appreciation for the literary heritage just as public libraries began to do in the late 19th century. traditional definition of literacy is considered to be the ability to read and write or the ability to use Language to read, write, listen, A public library (also called circulating library) is a Library which is accessible by the Public and is generally funded from public sources (such [13][14]

Project Gutenberg is intentionally decentralized. For example, there is no selection policy dictating what texts to add. Instead, individual volunteers work on what they are interested in, or have available. The Project Gutenberg collection is intended to preserve items for the long term, so they cannot be lost by any one localized accident. In an effort to ensure this, the entire collection is backed-up regularly and mirrored on servers in many different locations.

Copyright issues

Project Gutenberg is careful to verify the status of its ebooks according to U.S. copyright law. United States copyright law governs the legally enforceable rights of creative and artistic works in the United States. Material is added to the Project Gutenberg archive only after it has received a copyright clearance, and records of these clearances are saved for future reference. Unlike some other digital library projects, Project Gutenberg does not claim new copyright on titles it publishes. Instead, it encourages their free reproduction and distribution. [1]

Most books in the Project Gutenberg collection are distributed as public domain under U. The public domain is a range of abstract materials &ndash commonly referred to as Intellectual property &ndash which are not owned or controlled by anyone S. copyright law. The licensing included with each ebook puts some restrictions on what can be done with the texts (such as distributing them in modified form, or for commercial purposes) as long as the Project Gutenberg trademark is used. The verb license or grant license means to give permission The noun license is the document demonstrating that permission A trademark or trade mark, represented by the symbols ™ and ®, or mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual If the header is stripped and the trademark not used, then the public domain texts can be reused without any restrictions.

There are also a few copyrighted texts that Project Gutenberg distributes with permission. These are subject to further restrictions as specified by the copyright holder.

Criticism

Project Gutenberg has been criticized for lack of scholarly rigor in its e-texts: for example, there is usually inadequate information about the edition used and often omission of original prefaces. However, John Mark Ockerbloom of the University of Pennsylvania noted that PG is responsive about addressing errors once they are identified, and the texts now include specific source edition citations. John Mark Ockerbloom is a pioneer in library science He was the first person to make a substantial effort to catalog online books in a rigorous and comprehensive manner The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn) is a private University located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. [15] In many cases the editions also are not the most current scholarly editions, for these later editions are not usually in the public domain.

While the works in Project Gutenberg represent a valuable sample of publications that span several centuries, there are some issues of concern for linguistic analysis. Some content may have been modified by the transcriber because of editorial changes or corrections (such as to correct for obvious proofsetter or printing errors). The spelling may also have been modified to conform with current practices. This can mean that the works may be problematic when searching for older grammatical usage. Finally the collected works can be weighted heavily toward certain authors (such as Charles Dickens), while others are barely represented. [16]

In March 2004, a new initiative was begun by Michael Hart and John S. Guagliardo[17] to provide low-cost intellectual properties. The initial name for this project was Project Gutenberg 2 (PG II), which created controversy among PG volunteers because of the re-use of the project's trademarked name for a commercial venture. [6]

Affiliated projects

All affiliated projects are independent organizations which share the same ideals, and have been given permission to use the Project Gutenberg trademark. They often have a particular national, or linguistic focus. [18]

List of affiliated projects

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d Thomas, Jeffrey (July 20, 2007). Project Runeberg is an initiative patterned after Project Gutenberg that publishes freely available electronic versions of books significant to the culture and history of the Google Book Search is a tool from Google that searches the full text of books that Google scans OCRs, and stores in its digital database The Open Content Alliance (OCA is a consortium of non-profit and for-profit groups dedicated to building a free archive of digital text and multimedia Wikisource is a Wikimedia project to build a free, Wiki Library of Source texts along with translations into any language This is a list of projects related to digital libraries. General collections AccessMyLibrary AJOL - African Journals LibriVox is a Digital library of free Public domain Audiobooks read by Volunteers The project started in August 2005 and as of 2008-09-14 Project Gutenberg Digital Library Seeks To Spur Literacy. U. S. Department of State, Bureau of International Information Programs. Retrieved on 2007-08-20. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 636 - Battle of Yarmouk: Arab forces led by Khalid ibn al-Walid take control of Syria and Palestine
  2. ^ Hart, Michael S. (August 1992). Michael Stern Hart (b 1947 in Tacoma Washington) is an American best known as the founder of Project Gutenberg which makes electronic books Gutenberg:The History and Philosophy of Project Gutenberg. Retrieved on 2006-12-05. Year 2006 ( MMVI) was a Common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. Events 63 BC - Cicero reads the last of his Catiline Orations.
  3. ^ Day, B. H. ; Wortman, W. A. (2000). Literature in English: A Guide for Librarians in the Digital Age. Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries, p. 170. ISBN 0838980813.  
  4. ^ Vara, Vauhini. "Project Gutenberg Fears No Google", Wall Street Journal, December 5, 2005. Retrieved on 2007-08-15. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 778 - The Battle of Roncevaux Pass, at which Roland is killed  
  5. ^ Gutenberg:Credits. Project Gutenberg (June 8, 2006). Retrieved on 2007-08-15. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 778 - The Battle of Roncevaux Pass, at which Roland is killed
  6. ^ a b Hane, Paula (2004). "Project Gutenberg Progresses". Information Today 21 (5).  
  7. ^ Staff (August 2007). The Distributed Proofreaders Foundation. Distributed proofreaders. Retrieved on 2007-08-10. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 612 BC - Killing of Sinsharishkun, King of Assyrian Empire
  8. ^ According to gutindex-2006, there were 1,653 new Project Gutenberg items posted in the first 33 weeks of 2006. This averages out to 50. 09 per week. This does not include additions to affiliated projects.
  9. ^ For a listing of the categorized books, see: Staff (April 28, 2007). Category:Bookshelf. Project Gutenberg. Retrieved on 2007-08-18. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 293 BC - The oldest known Roman temple to Venus is founded starting the institution of Vinalia Rustica.
  10. ^ Boumphrey, Frank (July 2000). European Literature and Project Gutenberg. Cultivate Interactive. Retrieved on 2007-08-15. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 778 - The Battle of Roncevaux Pass, at which Roland is killed
  11. ^ Hart, Michael S. (October 23, 2004). Gutenberg Mission Statement by Michael Hart. Project Gutenberg. Retrieved on 2007-08-15. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 778 - The Battle of Roncevaux Pass, at which Roland is killed
  12. ^ Project Gutenberg calls its products "ebooks," and that term is used here. The corresponding Wikipedia term is e-texts. An e-text (from " electronic text " sometimes written as etext) is generally any Text-based information that is available in a digitally
  13. ^ Perry, Ruth (2007). Postscript about the Public Libraries. Modern Language Association. Retrieved on 2007-08-20. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 636 - Battle of Yarmouk: Arab forces led by Khalid ibn al-Walid take control of Syria and Palestine
  14. ^ Lorenzen, Michael (2002). Deconstructing the Philanthropic Library: The Sociological Reasons Behind Andrew Carnegie's Millions to Libraries. Modern Language Association. Retrieved on 2007-08-20. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 636 - Battle of Yarmouk: Arab forces led by Khalid ibn al-Walid take control of Syria and Palestine
  15. ^ Martha L. Brogan, Daphnée Rentfrow (2005). A Kaleidoscope of Digital American Literature. New York: Digital Library Federation. ISBN 1933645288.  
  16. ^ Hoffmann, Sebastian (2005). Grammaticalization And English Complex Prepositions: A Corpus-based Study, 1st Edition, Routledge. ISBN 0415360498.  
  17. ^ Executive director of the World eBook Library.
  18. ^ Staff (July 17, 2007). Gutenberg:Partners, Affiliates and Resources. Project Gutenberg. Retrieved on 2007-08-20. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 636 - Battle of Yarmouk: Arab forces led by Khalid ibn al-Walid take control of Syria and Palestine
  19. ^ Staff (January 24, 2007). Project Gutenberg of Australia. Retrieved on 2006-08-10. Year 2006 ( MMVI) was a Common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. Events 612 BC - Killing of Sinsharishkun, King of Assyrian Empire
  20. ^ Staff (1994). Projekt Gutenberg-DE. Spiegel Online. Retrieved on 2007-08-20. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 636 - Battle of Yarmouk: Arab forces led by Khalid ibn al-Walid take control of Syria and Palestine
  21. ^ Staff (2004). Project Gutenberg Consortia Center. Retrieved on 2007-08-20. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 636 - Battle of Yarmouk: Arab forces led by Khalid ibn al-Walid take control of Syria and Palestine
  22. ^ Staff. PG-EU. Retrieved on 2007-08-20. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 636 - Battle of Yarmouk: Arab forces led by Khalid ibn al-Walid take control of Syria and Palestine
  23. ^ Staff. Project Gutenberg of the Philippines. Retrieved on 2007-08-20. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 636 - Battle of Yarmouk: Arab forces led by Khalid ibn al-Walid take control of Syria and Palestine
  24. ^ Staff (2005). Project Gutenberg Europe. EUnet Yugoslavia. Retrieved on 2007-08-20. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 636 - Battle of Yarmouk: Arab forces led by Khalid ibn al-Walid take control of Syria and Palestine
  25. ^ Kirps, Jos (May 22, 2007). Project Gutenberg Luxembourg. Retrieved on 2007-08-20. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 636 - Battle of Yarmouk: Arab forces led by Khalid ibn al-Walid take control of Syria and Palestine
  26. ^ Riikonen, Tapio (February 28, 2005). Projekti Lönnrot. Retrieved on 2007-08-20. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 636 - Battle of Yarmouk: Arab forces led by Khalid ibn al-Walid take control of Syria and Palestine
  27. ^ Project Gutenberg Canada. Retrieved on 2007-08-20. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 636 - Battle of Yarmouk: Arab forces led by Khalid ibn al-Walid take control of Syria and Palestine

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