From hart at pglaf.org Mon Jul 4 10:13:12 2005
From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart)
Date: Tue Jul 5 12:07:30 2005
Subject: [gweekly] 34 Years of Project Gutenberg
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.60.0507040959560.13473@pglaf.org>
34 Years of Project Gutenberg
A Trillion eBooks Given Away !!!
If our average eBook has reached only 1% of the world population of
6,451,809,157 that would be 16,621 x 64,518,092 = 1.07 Trillion !!!
July 4, 2005 marks the completion of the 34th year of
Project Gutenberg and the beginning of our 35th year.
Here is a very brief review of our current projects:
[More information available on request]
This past month marked the official beginnings of our
new companion, Project Gutenberg of Europe with eBook
entries expected in over 100 languages. In the first
month we have seen a total of 100 about eBooks and an
assortment of 65 articles in total, thus representing
62 Eurasian languages and dialects. Volunteer effort
is totally responsible for these, and your assistance
to PGE would be greatly appreciated in creating eBook
titles from all of the ~120 languages and dialects in
which PGE hope to produce eBooks.
http://pge.rastko.net [Project Gutenberg Europe]
http://dp.rastko.net [Distributed Proofreaders Europe]
The original Distributed Proofreaders have now created
over 7,000 eBooks and you can volunteer to proofread 1
page or 100 pages or 1,000 at: http://www.pgdp.net
At this moment the initial Project Gutenberg site has
progressed about 2/3 of the way from 10,000 to 20,000
cataloged items in a range of about 45 languages.
http://www.gutenberg.org
By July 4, 2006 this total should be at 20,000 items.
This total includes nearly 500 entries out of Project
Gutenberg of Australia. http://gutenberg.net.au
104 languages are included with the Project Gutenberg
Consortia Center. http://www.gutenberg.cc
In addition Project Gutenberg of Canada is beginning,
Please email:
pgcanada@lists.pglaf.org
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Project Gutenberg efforts are also starting to get on
track in Portugal and The Philippines.
We would like to take this opportunity to give thanks
to our major download site at ibiblio.org operated at
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where
over a million eBooks per month have been downloaded,
month after month, year after year.
A year from now we hope you might be able to download
50,000 items via the combined Project Gutenberg sites.
*
Not Just Downloads, We Also Hand Out Physical Media
In addition, we are working on The Million Dollar DVD
of which the current prototype contains nearly 26,000
eBooks, and is about 3/4 full. With those additional
books we can add in the last 1/4, plus compression of
a better variety, we are hoping to put perhaps 40,000
eBooks on one single-sided single-layered DVD that we
can encourage people to copy onto $1 blanks.
Using about 1/3 of the current average hardback price
of ~$75, we can easily count these 40,000 eBooks with
the value as $1,000,000.
Of course, if you wanted to use "list price" then you
could say it was "The Three Million Dollar DVD" {TM}.
In addition, just a week ago we received our test DVD
for our first double-layered version, which would let
us put twice as much on a single disc, and now at the
same price per layer as the previous versions. These
advances will likely continue until we are able to do
a double-sided double-layered DVD containing 155,000,
which means that you get a million dollar total value
using per book price less than the average paperback,
along with a searchable catalog.
Last week we gave away 10,000,000 eBooks in Alaska to
give a boost to the eBook program of Alaska's Library
Association, the University of Alaska, and many other
participants in our presentations there.
We donated a DVD containing 5,000 eBooks to every one
of the Alaska Library Association member libraries!!!
We are hoping to do such projects in North Dakota and
other far regions, as well as everywhere else we will
be asked.
Just let us know if you are interested.
These are some of the dreams of Project Gutenberg and
we would LOVE to include your goals in our projects.
*
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has
received official non-profit 501(c)(3) status via the
U.S. Internal Revenue Service and is solely supported
by your donations. Nearly everyone at PG volunteers,
even those few who are on the payroll.
For more information, including several ways to donate:
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or
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As always, our HUGE thanks to the tens of thousands of
people who have volunteered with Project Gutenberg and
to those who will carry us on into the future.
Michael S. Hart
Started July 4, 1971
Continuing July 4, 2005
other_2005_07_04_34_years_of_project_gutenberg.txt
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