From - Thu Sep 26 20:40:22 2002
Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 11:02:43 -0400 (EDT)
From: Michael Hart <hart@beryl.ils.unc.edu>
Subject: [gmonthly] Project Gutenberg Needs You!!!
To: Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter <gmonthly@listserv.unc.edu>
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
X-Message-Id: <Pine.GSO.4.44.0209261101560.24381-100000@beryl>
List-Owner: <mailto:owner-gmonthly@listserv.unc.edu>
List-Subscribe: <mailto:subscribe-gmonthly@listserv.unc.edu>
X-List-Host: The UNC List Server
*Project Gutenberg Request for Support for September 27, 2002*
WE NEED YOUR HELP !!!
We need to reach a wider audience if we are going to give away
the ONE TRILLION eBooks that has been our goal for many years.
We particularly need help with FTPing eBook files to our sites
once 99% of the work has been done in their preparation. . . !
WE also need ISP support for Project Gutenberg of Australia--
if you know any sites down under.
[This is a blatant request for support for Project Gutenberg
Please delete it and accept our apology if not interested!!]
Please help us reach more readers. . .send us email addresses
for anyone you know in the media. . .if no email address then
web addresses. Thank you so much! MUCH MORE IS BELOW!!!
It Has Been Six Months Since Our Last Such Request Last Spring
Since that time we have moved through 5,000 eBooks to 6,000!!!
And, WITH YOUR HELP, we want to try to make
it eBook #10,000 by the end of next year!!!
Also, we have just purchased and installed a new super-scanner
for the Distributed Proofreaders, so we can scan more books.
You can contact them do proofing or to send books at:
http://charlz.dns2go.com/gutenberg
We are working to set up a way to collect books for this, so I
ask you to keep an eye out at the garage sales & library sales.
With the presentation of our 6,000th eBook this very week,
Project Gutenberg officially passed the 60% marker in this
attempt to give a total of 10,000 eBooks to 100 million of
the world's readers, and to help create more readers along
the way.
In 2001 Project Gutenberg published 1240 new eBooks.
In 2002 we have already published ~~1700 new eBooks,
In 2002 we hope to have published ~~2400 new eBooks.
We hope to produce 4,000 more in the next 15 months,
to reach our goal of 10,000 eBooks by Dec. 31, 2003!
*****WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT*****
Why Should *YOU* Support Project Gutenberg?
Because The Work of Project Gutenberg is:
1. Permanent
2. Free
3. Available
4. Useful
5. Enlightening
6. Growing
and, best of all
7. Yours!
[Details below on these 7 points]
This is a LONG message. . .we have been writing and rewriting
it as a major project for several months. . .more hours than
you would probably like to imagine. . . .
If you want to cut to the chase and donate right away. . .
These donations should be made out to the:
"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
and sent to our mailing address:
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
PMB 113
1739 University Ave.
Oxford, MS 38655-4109
USA
As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people
and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut,
Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois,
Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts,
Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio,
Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South
Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West
Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
Unapproved Status
-------------- --------
Arizona Sent
California Sent
I think these two are OK now. . . .
Colorado Starting over
Maryland Starting over
Minnesota Starting over
North Dakota Starting over
Wyoming Starting over
This list changes constantly, in fact it even changed today, as more
and more paperwork comes and goes. You can get the latest lists from:
Anne Wingate <Gutenberg9443@aol.com>
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we know NOTHING
about whether or not they are deductible. . . .
***
Project Gutenberg has been producing 200 eBooks/month, 2400/year.
It was only 5 years ago that we managed our first 100 Etext year.
Our volunteers produced 1,650 eBooks in the past 12 months, and
our next major goal is to reach 10,000 eBooks by the end of 2003!
Lot's of important news for those who read all the way thru.
We Have Made It Much Easier To Volunteer
http://promo.net/pg/volunteer.html
We Have Made It Much Easier To Donate [More Below]
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3)
organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541
[Also sometimes referred to as a "federal tax id number."]
Currently we are in sort of a Catch-22 fundraising situation.
We are registered in most of the 50 states, with paperwork
in to get to all of them, but we don't have enough money
to reregister in all states. . .and the stack of paperwork
for these is literally as large as the person handling them.
The biggest part of this kind of Catch-22 situation is that
we are aware of at least one state that would fine us up to
$2,000 if we don't keep our registrations up to date. You
can understand the terrible price we pay if we don't raise
enough money to even pay for all the legal paperwork and
registrations, we lose far more than what we might be able
to raise in that state.
The trustees of the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
have told me that they have seen reputable reports that the cost
of complying with the laws of all 50 states runs approximately
$25,000 a year for small organizations and can go much higher
for larger organizations. There are many fees associated with
compliance, such as renewal registration fees, the cost of an
audit by a CPA which some states require and fees for registered
agent services required in some states.
Obviously, we did the easiest and least expensive states first,
but some are the most difficult and expensive states are key states
with large populations that we need to reach.
None of our trustees have the time to do all this by themselves,
so we also have to pay for a 1/4 time assistant, even though our
trustees do serve pro bono. Please note that we are in the process
of incorporating, so most Trustees will be on the Board of Directors.
We are unsure how states where we are not registered would view
appearances on national shows, such as Oprah, Regis, Letterman and Leno.
If they viewed these efforts as fundraising in their states, it could
cause serious problems. So we are in even more of a Catch-22 than it
might appear at first, until we are registered in all 50 states,
and the District of Columbia.
We are expecting to have approximately 10,000 eBooks online by the
end of next year, with nearly 2,000 volunteers whom we would like
to provide more support for in the areas of copyright research,
book finding, scanning, proofreading, etc. Currently every one
of the Project Gutenberg sites around the world is operated by
a volunteer who provides all the disk space, bandwidth, etc.,
and we would love to buy our own drives for at least the two
major US sites on which we initially post our eBooks.
***
Please send donations to:
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
PMB 113
1739 University Ave.
Oxford, MS 38655-4109
USA
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3)
organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541,
and has been approved as a 501(c)(3) organization by the US Internal
Revenue Service (IRS). Donations are tax-deductible to the maximum
extent permitted by law. As the requirements for other states are met,
additions to this list will be made and fund raising will begin in the
additional states.
In answer to various questions we have received on this:
We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork
to legally request donations in all 50 states. If
your state is not listed and you would like to know
if we have added it since the list you have, just ask.
While we cannot solicit donations from people in
states where we are not yet registered, we know
of no prohibition against accepting donations
from donors in these states who approach us with
an offer to donate.
***
First a few lines of comment on each of these topics,
then a more detailed explanation.
1. Permanent
Unlike the usual character of the Internet and the World Wide Web,
television and radio, or most other modern media production outlets,
Project Gutenberg is a landmark. . .a permanent feature of the Net
. . .since before anyone had coined the term "Internet". . .since
before the World Wide Web. . .
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was founded to
ensure the continued existence and viability of our mission for
more decades, or even centuries into the future. . .with your help."
2. Free
There are no hidden costs to use Project Gutenberg, no hardware
or software requirements. . .nearly every computer comes with a
wide variety of ways to receive, save, read and search our eBooks.
3. Available
Project Gutenberg makes eBooks available in the easiest formats
to read, search, quote, etc. . .this is particularly important
to the visually impaired who use various programs to read aloud.
Contrary to the policies of most eBook operations, Project
Gutenberg encourages EVERYONE to download our eBooks and to
make them available to the public at large. . .worldwide,
with only a few words of warning not to violate local laws
concerning various copyrighted or trademarked materials we
include in our collection. Most sites actively discourage
reposting of their files because they want all the hits.
Because of our unusual free access policy, volunteers have
created mirror sites in wide varieties of regions, including
every continent in the world, even Antarctica. . .to insure
everyone has easy access. Within the last year or two, new
PG sites are up in Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Hungary,
in addition to more sites in the United States and Canada.
"There is no end to the great things we can accomplish
if we don't worry about who gets the credit." Anonymous
We don't care about getting the credit, we just want to
do the work.
4. Useful
Students and scholars all over the world use Project Gutenberg
eBooks to search, research, and just plain read for fun. As a
wider variety of screens become available, with an increasing
number of colors, more and more people are reading full books
on their computers, laptops, and palmtops. In addition, Project
Gutenberg eBooks are wonderfully flexible for visually impaired
readers, and are easily readable by the text-to-speech software
used by many who cannot read at all. More and more libraries
are now including Project Gutenberg eBooks in their collections.
5. Enlightening
We are making a great effort to include every language we can
in our collection, and are hoping to include the classic books
from every culture within each language. Project Gutenberg is
hoping to indeed be "A Window On The World." We are hoping to
add a new language every month or two in 2002, please make sure
we add something in YOUR language[s].
6. Growing
We used to talk about Project Gutenberg as a kind of "book of the
month" production system. . .but now you would have to buy a whole
new bookshelf each and every month to hold all the paper editions
we present *OR* just add one new CDROM. . .hee hee!!!
7. Yours
These books are yours, permanently. . . .
When you get a Project Gutenberg eBook, you have not checked it out,
licenced it, rented it, borrowed it, or any other temporary idiom.
You can quote them in any way you like, school papers, research,
books YOU may write. . .without limitation, other than on the 1%
of them that are copyrighted works, but you can still give those
away to anyone you like.
These books are YOURS. . .as many copies as you want. . .
any time you want. . .any place you want. . .
and they don't take up any space. . .
it's *literally* any *place* you want.
As a volunteer, these books are even more intimately yours, as we try
very hard to encourage our volunteers to do their own favorite books,
in their own languages, in their own good time. . .we don't put anyone
on a schedule. . . .
Here are the details. . . .
1. The Work of Project Gutenberg is Permanent.
The major difference between the products of Project Gutenberg
and those of other non-profit organizations such as PBS, NPR, etc.,
is that even now in its 32nd year, our original Etext of the U. S.
Declaration of Independence is downloaded by more people every year
than in any previous year of the history of the Internet. When you
support Project Gutenberg, your support is seen permanently. Your
contributions will be online for everyone to see from the moment of
the Newsletter announcements and will be listed in all the major
search engines and catalogs on the Internet.
You won't find TV showing all the shows from 30 years ago. . .but
the Project Gutenberg eBooks are there forever. We update format
types from time to time, and correct errors, but when your family
reads any of our eBooks now, we want you to know you will be able
to find it again generations down the road. We already have people
getting married and starting families of their own, who read Alice
from Project Gutenberg when they weren't even teenagers yet. . .and
their kids are growing up with the same traditions.
This is quite different from the way most Internet sites exist as a
day to day phenomenon, whereas we are planning on Project Gutenberg
eBooks being available as long as there IS an Internet.
When you buy CDROMs of most eBooks you get something that requires a
certain operating system, and even a certain version of it, usually
one that likely will be incompatible with the next version or the one
after that. . .and then you have to go out and buy another version.
That's where the big difference lies between Project Gutenberg eBook
and nearly every other kind you can get. . .you can still copy books
from Project Gutenberg onto your floppies, carry them to nearly any
computer, and read them with minimal effort, no installation needed.
2. The Work of Project Gutenberg is Free.
Because no installation is needed, these eBooks ARE free. . .there is
no particular brand of hardware or software you need to buy to read a
Project Gutenberg eBook. . .you don't even have to download a browser
. . .whether it is free or not. . . . Virtually every computer there
is in the world can read these eBooks just the way it comes, and that
is the point of our existence. . . .
We want EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE, EVERYWHEN to have free access to such a
library of classics in EVERY LANGUAGE.
6,000 Project Gutenberg titles are now available, and end users are
never charged a penny by Project Gutenberg for them. All the eBooks
are done by our volunteers. All the sites are run by volunteers.
3. The Work of Project Gutenberg is Available.
The Project Gutenberg eBooks are available from servers on all continents.
We hope to the number of servers will continually increase, and eventually
hope to have servers not just on every continent, but in every region,
and then in every country. New sites are now in Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria,
and several others. With 3 billion computers already around the world,
and used ones available at garage sales for $5, pretty much anyone who
really wants to read eBooks and has electricity can do it. I should add
that we are aware that 60% of the world's population has never made a
phone call. . .which is one reason we promote the giving away of our
eBooks on disks. . .we were receiving letters from around the world
from people who had received our eBooks on disk years before the
Internet actually circled the globe.
Our eBooks are actually available for download from several satellites.
4. The Work of Project Gutenberg is Useful.
Looking up something in any of our books takes less time that it would to
walk over to your own bookcase and find it in your own book. Quoting the
material is even faster. The Complete Works of Shakespeare could be used
for a search that would take literally seconds. We also have very complete
editions of Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson, so complete that
they have been listed in library journals as the most complete available
to the public in the entire world. [I don't know if there are privately
owned collections that have more. But the whole point is that anyone can
add our entire collection to theirs with no effort.]
We make our eBooks available in plain formats that virtually all programs
can read, quote, edit, search, etc. Thus our readers use a wider variety
of computers and programs, at their own discretion, and budget, to read a
wide variety of eBooks. This is a very important aspect of our work. . .
to make eBooks available to everyone. . .and to let them read it in their
own favorite programs, in their own favorite fonts, to search with search
engines of all varieties, not just those designed to parse through markup
systems of a particular variety. We also provide conversions into markup
formats for many of these. These are not trivially created by programmed
output only, but are the creations of days of work by our volunteers. In
addition, the plain text versions are great for our blind readers who use
programs to read aloud to them.
5. The Work of Project Gutenberg is Enlightening.
My hope is that the work of Project Gutenberg will finally allow access
to the information and literature of the entire world to the entire world.
"Of The People, By The People, For The People". . .says it pretty well.
Hopefully you will include yourself as one of "These People."
6. Project Gutenberg Is Growing
Project Gutenberg is now producing 200 eBooks/month, 2400/year.
It was only 5 years ago that we managed our first 100 eBook year.
Our volunteers produced 1,650 eBooks in the past 12 months, and
we hope reach a total of 10,000 as quickly as possible, perhaps
even by the end of next year, only 15 months from now. . . .
Not only is Project Gutenberg growing, but our audience is growing
as well, and even more quickly. Our Sites Coordinator just told me
that half the people reading our books are new over the past 18 months.
This is not uncommon among brand new enterprises, but when you realize
this is our 30th year, such growth is truly. . .no hyperbole. . . . .
PHENOMENAL!
Here is a brief history of our growth rate:
Here is brief timeline from the 1st Etext in 1971
to the current production of #4000.
1 per year in 1971-1979 completed the first 9 Etexts
which were mostly a "History of Western Democracy"
>From 1980-1990 the first Bible and Shakespeare were completed,
but due to the new copyright extensions, the Shakespeare is
still not able to be released. Thus the total was 10 Etexts.
[Counting all of Shakespeare and The Bible as 1 Etext each.]
[This particular edition of Shakespeare is still copyrighted,
even now, 20 years later, due to TWO copyright extensions in
the 31 year history of Project Gutenberg, which have removed
two million books from the list we could put online.
eBooks per month per year
1 in 1991 We released The Bible as #10.
2 in 1992
4 in 1993
8 in 1994 We released The Complete Shakespeare as #100.
16 in 1995
32 in 1996
32 in 1997 [we lost our funding for that year, and barely survived]
36 in 1998 [kept this schedule for first half and then in second half
we completed two months during each month for 72 per month]
36 in 1999 [is our official schedule, we are now about 8 months ahead,
but, as luck would have it, on the day the muse struck to
write this article, I learned that our funding is again lost.]
40 in 2000 [I was never personally comfortable doing over 30 per month,
50 in 2001 so this is when I started planning all the delegating of today]
100 in 2001 [Starting on our 30th Anniversay, and we thought we would NEVER
be able to do this many, so it would bring us back on schedule,
but so far, only three months later, we have. . .so who knows.]
[Note added in January, 2002, we managed to do 1240 in 2001, so
we did somehow manage to average 100 per month--who knows how.]
200 in 2002 We started 2002 with an incredible 200 eBooks per month, and it
is amazing, and we are still very close to that. Right now we
have an average of 198 per month for the first 8 1/2 months.
Here are some of the highlights:
#### Date Title
1 1971 The U.S. Declaration of Independence [July 4, 1971]
10 1990 The King James Bible
100 1994 The Complete Works of William Shakespeare [December 10, 1993]
1000 1997 Dante's Divine Comedy, In Italian[September 1, 1997]
2000 1999 Don Quixote, In Spanish [April 23, 1999]
3000 2000 A L'Ombre Des Jeunes Filles en Fleurs V3 by Proust, In French
4000 2001 The Complete Works of "The French Immortals", In English
5000 2002 The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, In English [April 10, 2002]
6000 2002 Our First Polish eBook "Ironia Pozorow" [September, 2002]
[Now that we can officially say we have "thousands" of these
eBooks online, we should prepare to create an institution of
support for Project Gutenberg that will hopefully carry this
project into, and at least part of the way through, the next
millennium. . .your help could be invaluable. . .more below]
We Have Made It Much Easier To Volunteer, see promo.net/pg!!
[There is a brand new set of web pages for our volunteers so
please help us with any suggestions and/or corrections, your
help in making this page serve our volunteers is appreciated
more than you might imagine. . .this page could become a big
foundation for our future volunteers; we are ALL volunteers]
***
Do We Provide Access to A Trillion Dollars Of Etext Yet?!?!?
Yes, if we manage to get the average one of our 6,000 eBooks
to 1.6% of the world's population, using a nominal value of
$1.67 as a street value of the average one of our books:
our population has passed 6.25 billion about the same time
we released Project Gutenberg eBook #6000.
Next year, as the population grows, this percentage should
fall into the 1.5x% range; and as the population should be
leveling out just before we reach 10 billion: this figure
may never quite reach 1% = 100 million people.
OK. . .enough math. . .!!!
;-)
***
The major purpose of Project Gutenberg is to encourage great
and small efforts towards the creation and distribution of a
library of eBooks for unlimited distribution worldwide. Our
goal is to encourage the creation and distribution of Etext.
What about the original goal set 30 years ago?
This goal may have already been accomplished. . .though many
of the 20,000 files are still very much Limited Distribution
items, and we are hoping to see these posted in more places,
on more sites, for greater and greater public access. These
will hopefully all be posted on Project Gutenberg sites some
time in the not too distant future, we are discussing this a
lot with the other eBook makers. Creating a liaison between
all the eBook makers is one of our major goals right now.
There are currently over 20,000 eBooks listed in the indices
of the Internet Public Library, and, as usual between 20-25%
of them are from Project Gutenberg.
We should raise money to hire a copyright lawyer for this to
help us work on copyright research for many of the eBooks of
"unknown origin" that we can't republish yet.
***
If we are going to continue on past the first goal of 10,000 eBook
titles, then we are going to need some Big Time Public Relations--
and some Big Time fundraising. . .here's why. . . .
1. Getting the eBooks to twice as many people is just as important
as creating twice as many eBooks. . .but without MAJOR publicity it
is not likely to happen. . .we constantly get messages from readers
who tell us they have been LOOKING for eBooks for years, but barely
now have FINALLY found Project Gutenberg. This means we cannot get
to a major part of our audience with the kind of publicity we have,
we need something more. . . . For example, we were the first in an
entirely new column: "People To Watch" in TIME magazine, but there
were less than a dozen emails Project Gutenberg received from these
very kind words. . .what we really need is to get on Oprah Winfrey,
and hopefully add something to her book club. Those of you on AOL,
perhaps you could email the show and request they invite us, and do
the same for Letterman, Leno, Rosie, Regis and all the others.
We should undoubtedly also try the other talk shows, and "magazine"
shows, etc. All the press we receive is from them contacting us, I
have had no luck "generating" publicity. . .which seems to be easy,
for those who have the knack. . .it's just not MY knack. . .help!!!
We really need to find some Public Relations help!!!
2. However, running this great group of volunteers to generate the
more than 1,500 new eBooks over the recently past eleven months has
been something that is a knack I have. . .and it hasn't cost a very
large amount of money to do this: otherwise you wouldn't know that
we exist. . .BUT running a group of 10,000 volunteers to create the
1,000,000 eBooks that may possibly be a next step, will NOT be easy
--even for people with a knack for it. It would require more phone
lines and/or calls than even the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation could presently afford. . .and more email than I can do,
on my own. . .SO we either need volunteers to help coordinate, or--
the possibility looms that we should actually HIRE people. . . .
Even if we have more volunteers to help, the Foundation needs to
actually hire some people to assure a basic level of continuous
coordination and support for volunteers, especially as the number
of volunteers increases.
When I first started Project Gutenberg in 1971, I was sure I should
be able to find someone else to replace me, as it did not cost real
money or take real time to run. . .but for the last 10 years it has
taken just about all the time I have, including what I would need a
lot more of to have a personal life. . .and I would LIKE to have an
expectation that Project Gutenberg would survive at least 10 years,
after I am gone, and hopefully 100, and if I really dream, 1,000!!!
So. . .if you are willing and able to help us with these or in some
related manner, PLEASE LET ME KNOW. . . .
***
Contents
Overview
0.
eBooks in Various Languages
1.
Copyright
2.
Scanning and Typing
3.
Proofreading
4.
FTP and WWW Sites
5.
Donations
6.
Raiders of the Lost Archives
7.
Special Requests
8.
Programming
9.
New eBooks Needing Proofreading
Followed By More Detailed Information On Most Of These Subjects
*******
0.
eBooks in Various Languages
As you may be aware, this last year we have greatly expanded our
output of eBooks in languages other than English, including:
1. English
2. Latin
3. French
4. Italian
5. German
6. Spanish
7. Chinese
8. Japanese
9. Swedish
10. Danish
11. DNA/ATGC
12. Welsh
13. Portuguese
14. Old Dutch [pre 1949]
15. Bulgarian
16. Dutch/Flemish
17. Greek
18. Hebrew
19. Polish
20. Old French*
21 Russian*
22. Romanian*
[Those with an * are still in need of more help]
eBook Languages
alphabetically:
1. Bulgarian
2. Chinese
3. Danish
4. DNA/ATGC
5. Dutch
6. English
7. Flemish
8. French
9. German
10. Greek
11. Hebrew
12. Italian
13. Japanese
14. Latin
15. Polish
16. Portugese
17. Spanish
18. Swedish
19. Welsh
***
The Distributed Proofreaders work in a variety of languages.
Also, we have just purchased and installed a new super-scanner
for the Distributed Proofreaders (http://charlz.dns2go.com/gutenberg)
so we can scan more books. We will also help with copyright research.
*
1.
Copyright
Project Gutenberg will do copyright research for you if you send us
xeroxes of the title page [both sides, even if one side is blank.]
[We will do this even for people working on other eBook projects.]
[This can now be done by sending us scans as email attachments!!!]
We need people to hunt through libraries or bookstores for editions
that we can use to legally prepare our Electronic Texts [Etexts.]
We will help you do the copyright research for your chosen books,
the laws are changing, perhaps even in the next few weeks, so I am
not including anything specific at the moment. We try to keep lists
of copyright laws around the world, so please help us keep up to date
when you hear of any changes.
2.
Scanning and Typing
Once we have located some proper edition[s], then our volunteers do
the books by scanning or typing them into the computer. Usually it
is the same person who does the proofreading, but not necessarily.
If you would like to help us make eBooks available in the future,
please contact the following:
Greg Newby <gbnewby@ils.unc.edu>
Brett Fishburne <william.fishburne@verizon.net>
Jim Tinsley <jtinsley@pobox.com>
with a cc: to me at hart@pobox.com
3.
Proofreading
We have a variety of ways for you to help with Project Gutenberg.
Often the only way for many of our volunteers to work on eBooks for
us is if they can ship their book to one of us, have it scanned in
and then returned to them for proofreading.
If you could do the scanning for them, it would help us immensely.
4.
FTP and WWW Sites
We would very much like to provide better access to eBook for sites
in Africa and South America, and other locales. If you know anyone
who might be able to help with this, please read this:
We are always in search of more FTP and World Wide Web sites, so an
increasing number of people can download our books without unusual,
even often fatal, delays and glitches in transmission.
If you, or someone you know, can spare a gigabyte on their servers,
please have them contact us about creating more mirror sites. This
is a particular need for countries south of the equator, where text
files are only available on one server that we know of. If you can
help us get our books into South America, Africa, and further, this
would be a great help. We have something restarted in New Zealand,
with extensions into Australia, but the load this server can handle
is probably going to be easily exhausted.
Some local research is required to find out what copyright laws and
other regulations must be satisfied to operate such servers.
5.
Donations
Project Gutenberg is almost completely dependent on your donations.
As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people
and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut,
Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois,
Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts,
Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio,
Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South
Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West
Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
Unapproved Status
-------------- --------
Arizona Sent
California Sent
[These two should be ok by now]
Colorado Starting over
Maryland Starting over
Minnesota Starting over
North Dakota Starting over
Wyoming Starting over
Anything you can do in these states would be greatly appreciated,
since we are at this juncture, helping us get more Public Relations
coverage of our just released 5,000th eBook.
As I said, anything would be greatly appreciated. This SHOULD BE a
great time to get some PR. . .but it still appears, even though the
project has been written up probably about 300 times, that they are
going to write us up when THEY have a reason to rather than when WE
have a reason, and we feel it is now time to try to break out of an
entirely too limiting niche in the computer oriented media, and get
some more general publicity out there to the millions of people who
aren't computer oriented at all, but will would like to receive the
eBooks for education or entertainment. This is a majority of world
population centers, and we should do more to reach them.
If you have any "ins" in the press or with the corporate world, this
would be a good time to use them.
6.
Raiders of the Lost Archives
As you may be aware from several events of a month ago, and earlier,
there is a downside to having eBook archives in limited distribution
modalities, simply because if one site, or one person, or even whole
countries, change their minds about what they are going to archive--
then the whole world loses access to those files.
A good example was the loss of The Oxford Book of English Verse from
Project Bartleby. We have taken great pains to get this book, which
is undoubtedly important, back on the Net. If you want to see which
sites have lost this file, just do a Yahoo search for the book, then
count the vast number of sites that have blank entries for the book,
once it was deleted from a multiplicity of links; this is an example
of how important it is for eBooks to be posted on many sites, rather
than just one site will many links to it!!!
We need volunteers who will search the world for every possible book
and help us preserve it.
Project Gutenberg will not release any of this material until we can
do the copyright research and prove it belongs in the Public Domain.
We realize that many of our volunteers sometimes get frustrated that
we do this research, which possibly takes half our time, but it will
become more and more apparent why this is a good policy as copyright
laws become stiffer and stiffer, and world intellectual property can
be limited in greater and great ways. It is quite likely that it is
going to be some time in the next calendar year that a United States
law killing off another 20 years of public domain in the US will get
passed, to join the countries listed above, in eliminating a million
books from potentially being posted as eBooks, even though 99% are a
dead issue, out of print for decades. . . .
[It did pass. October 27, 1998 - the U.S. went from life plus 50 to
life plus 70 for works created after 1/1/78, and from 75 to 95 years
for many works published before 1978. . .but this doesn't change the
items that had already entered the public domain in the US, unlike a
reversion from public domain status to copyright status in countries
in the European Union and other locales. Thus, the US copyright for
most works still cuts in at 1923. . .and this is scheduled to stay a
cutoff date until around 2020.]
So the rule of thumb we use most is that anything pre-1923 is ok.
7.
Special Requests
We occasionally receive scanned material which could have benefitted from
more cleanup before it was sent to us. What we need is proofers with
patience to read through an eBook and take out stray letters, clean up the
punctuation, and send a list of questionable lines to the person who
scanned it so they can send corrections to be inserted. This usually takes
a couple of weeks, and is a good short-term project for folks who want to
get their feet wet with Project Gutenberg.
8.
Programming
Due to the various formats in which we receive many of our eBooks,
we need some assistance in writing PERL scripts, vi scripts, or an
assortment of other scripts that will assist our proofreaders, and
our editors, in dealing with page numbers, markups, italics and an
assortment of other formatting issue that come up time to time.
Most of these are fairly trivial and can be solved with a one line
script for each of the particular situations and we just need some
people to either run the scripts we already have, or to write some
new ones from time to time when a particularly rough eBook version
arrives at our doorstep. These scripts, which take minutes to set
up, and seconds to run, can save HOURS of proofreaders' time. You
can be a BIG help just running some of these scripts for us, or in
writing or rewriting some of them on occasion.
***
More Detailed Information
1.
Copyright
Copyright Extension Is Also Happening in the United States
Since Project Gutenberg began in 1971, millions of copyrights in
the US should have expired, but are being prevented from expiring
by various political action groups.
2.
Scanning and Typing
We don't really want to get into a public recommendation about what
scanners and OCR [Optical Character Recognition] programs work best
. . .it is really the case that some do better on some books, while
others do better on other fonts, page coloration, etc.
However, we ARE willing to share our experience if you ask.
3.
Proofreading
Our official accuracy level that we try to maintain has been 99.9%,
for our first release, which is usually raised to 99.95% before the
vast majority of people ever see them, and this standard has been a
standard that has been adopted by most eBook providers, including a
new effort toward Etext by the Library of Congress and the national
libraries of Great Britain and other countries.
What we hope you realize is that any serious effort to get an eBook
to 100% accuracy should take MORE effort than to create an entirely
new Etext with an accuracy level of 99.9% to 99.95%.
While many, even most, of the Project Gutenberg eBooks are accurate
to an amazing degree, even more amazing when you compare then to an
entire world of eBooks prepared by both the scholarly or commercial
eBook enterprises, we do not feel that the additional doubling of a
more than massive effort, to possibly reduce the errors, by another
.02% perhaps, would have anywhere near the value of the preparation
of an entirely new eBook with the same amount of effort.
Nevertheless, even the most famous universities of the world have a
collection of eBooks, many of which have vastly more errors than in
our collection. This is also true of the commercial eBooks. Don't
be afraid that your efforts won't be as good as all the others, the
process of improving Project Gutenberg eBooks is never ending.
In addition, there are many volunteers who would prefer to have an
eBook or at least an author selected for them to work on. As some
of you already know, _I_ have been reluctant to choose for anyone,
not wanting to bias the formation of our collection with my choice
of what are the great books of human history.
More on:
Proofreading: We could also use people who know how to use DIFF or
Word's "compare" that point out differences between two files, even
programmers that might only be able to search our files for matched
and unmatched quotes. [Remember that when quoting many paragraphs,
each internal paragraph gets only an opening quote.]
Our proofreading is a never-ending story. . .we run spell-checkers,
and other varieties of programs, on our eBooks, and have real human
proofreaders go over them in pretty incredible detail, but we would
be remiss if we did not tell you that over 99% of the books we work
from have their own errors, and that while we catch some of those--
we undoubtedly introduce errors of our own, and even though we will
gladly keep updating our editions, ad infinitum, the odds that this
will catch ALL the errors in the near future are virtually 0%.
Therefore. . .we need you to email us when you have suggestion, and
comments, and when you find possible errors that need correction.
4.
FTP and WWW Sites
We are willing to adjust the bandwidth on various sites by adjusting
the publicity various sites receive, and also by asking our users to
only use certain sites at certain times of the day or night. So the
drain on sites volunteering to mirror eBooks should not suffer any.
Remember:
Some local research is required to find out what copyright laws and
other regulations must be satisfied to operate such servers.
5.
Donations
Because of the type of tax exempt organization that the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation falls within, it is especially
important that our financial support come from as wide a base as possible.
So far, we have not received any local, regional or national grants,
but when we do obtain such funding, it will be even more important to
maintain broad public support as well. To maintain our tax exempt status,
between 10% and 34% of our financial support must come from the public.
You are the backbone of our support.
We could barely survive otherwise.
6.
Raiders of the Lost Archives
We need people who can help us save eBooks that have been put online,
but without enough information to verify they are out of copyright.
This usually is done by comparing the first and last pages of each
chapter to a paper edition we can be sure is out of copyright.
If you can either help us find these eBooks, or their counterparts in
pre-1923 paper editions, you can help preserve these eBooks online,
otherwise they will are eventually likely to be deleted.
*
If you would like to volunteer, please contact:
Greg Newby <gbnewby@ils.unc.edu>, United States
John Bickers <jbickers@ihug.co.nz> New Zealand
Sue Asscher <asschers@bigpond.com> Australia
David Price <ccx074@coventry.ac.uk> England
Brett Fishburne <william.fishburne@verizon.net>
or
Colin Choat <CChoat@sanderson.net.au>,
Founder of Project Gutenberg of Australia
We also have a Coordinator for those interested
in German eBooks. . .Please contact:
Mike Pullen <globaltraveler5565@yahoo.com>
We are VERY interested in adding other languages,
making more translations, etc. Let me know if you
are interested!!!
Hopefully it has been worth your while to read this far. . .and you will take
a moment to consider making a tax-deductible donation to Project Gutenberg.
Well, that's all. . .except to include the address:
Donations should be made out to the:
"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
and sent to our mailing address:
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
PMB 113
1739 University Ave.
Oxford, MS 38655-4109
USA
[Sorry, legal beagles require me to put in this list each time I
mention the request for donations.
As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people
and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut,
Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois,
Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts,
Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio,
Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South
Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West
Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
Unapproved Status
-------------- --------
Arizona Sent
California Sent
[These two should be OK now]
Colorado Starting over
Maryland Starting over
Minnesota Starting over
North Dakota Starting over
Wyoming Starting over
[Resident of these five states CAN make donations,
it's just that we cannot solicit from them yet.]
My HUGE Thanks!!!
Michael S. Hart
<hart@pobox.com>
Project Gutenberg
"*Ask Dr. Internet*"
Executive Coordinator
"*Internet User ~#100*"
other_2002_09_26_project_gutenberg_needs_you.txt
If you liked this post, say thanks by sharing it.