PG Monthly Newsletter (2009-06-21)

by Michael Cook on June 21, 2009
Newsletters

The Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter--June 21, 2009
eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since 1971


42 Months to The End of the World Via Mayan Calendaring on December 21, 2012 
[some now saying October 11, 2011]

Leaving 3 years 6 months, 14  seasons or 42 months.

Not to worry, I will still make long range predictions.



Headline News



More eBooks To More People Via More Hardware and Software


The 39th year of Project Gutenberg will begin July 4th, 2009-- and we will 
once again be one of larger sponsors of The World eBook Fair at 
http://www.worldebookfair.org, which will reach the neighborhood of ~2.5 
million eBooks from July 4 to August 4, starting in about two weeks.

One of the major developments this year is the advance in the variety of 
hardware and software methods of reading eBooks in more circumstances, more 
locations, and, of course, with more eBooks in wider and wider circulation.

We will be sending out a special edition of this Newsletter a few weeks from 
now dedicated to these.



Our 25,000th eBook In English Will Be Coming Up Shortly


If you have any ideas, suggestions, comments, etc., about how we might 
commemorate this event, please let us know.



We Just Published Our:

200th eBook in Italian
400th eBook in Chinese
500th eBook in Finnish


We are coming up on our 250th in Spanish. . .suggestions???





iPhone Acquisition


As you know, we try to get one of each of the popular reading devices to test 
how our eBooks work on them and demonstrate a wide variety of reading options.

A friend is updating his iPhone today and I am buying his old one, so we would 
appreciate any suggestions of which programs we should load to demonstrate the 
widest variety of readers.



Some interesting notes about eBooks of various varieties:

National archives reviews purchases of paper materials in digital age Library 
and Archives Canada has put a moratorium on buying paper documents and books 
for its collection. Full Story:
http://links.cbc.ca/a/l.x?T=jncickgjiekjmplpgobfifjajd&M=36

...

Google Books Improves -
http://www.slaw.ca/2009/06/18/google-books-improves/

Google Books has released a number of improvements designed to make reading 
and sharing their material easier. The Books blog, Inside Google Book Search 
lists seven changes:




- embedding and links - From the new toolbar on a Books page you can copy a 
link to the source or the html necessary to produce an iframe in your blog or 
web page that will embed the source.

- improved search - There's now more context around your search terms, and you 
can rank your search results by relevance as well as page order.

- thumbnail view - More useful, perhaps, where images are involved, you can 
see an overview in thumbnails of the book you're examining.

- drop-down menu - The drop-down menu displays links to the various divisions 
within the book.

- plain text mode - Viewers can turn off the html mode and work simply with 
plain text.

- page turn animation - This feature, invoked by clicking at the bottom of


the screen, simulates a more natural progression through the book.

- improved book overview - There's more data about the book offered on the 
overview page.






British Library Publishes Online Archive of 19th-Century Newspapers Maev 
Kennedy The Guardian Thursday 18 June 2009 
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jun/18/
british-library-newspaper-archive-online>

A shorter URL for the above link:

<http://tinyurl.com/nknweq>


Over two million pages of 19th and early 20th century newspapers go online 
today, part of the vast British Library collection.

The 49 British national and regional titles cover events including the Battle 
of Waterloo in June 1815 "Vague reports have been made of the numbers slain on 
both sides ... We should not quote them if our silence could prevent the

spreading of disastrous intelligence", the Morning Chronicle reported. There 
was also the banks crisis of 1878, the first FA Cup final in 1872, and the 
triumph of the music hall star Vesta Tilley in a talent contest.


<snip>


The site

<http://newspapers.bl.uk/blcs>


holds journals including the True Crime of its day, the Illustrated Police 
News which covered the Jack the Ripper murders. The British Library worked in 
partnership with the Joint Information Systems Committee and Gale, part of 
Cengage Learning, to create the service. Searches are free, but users can pay 
to download information.

["Can pay"???  I wonder if that translates into "must pay,"
unless one is a certain kind of member or the like?]




Our All Time Hottest Requests!!!!!!!



FLASH RAM


I am looking for the earliest flash RAM possible.

The very earliest were PCMCIA cards, such as used for the Poqet computer, etc.

The earliest USB flash drives were DisgoDizgo, M-Systems and these were OEMed 
by IBM, HP, etc. They are particular in a recognizable fashion because their 
snapon connectors resemble the connectors of jigsaw puzzles.

We received two examples of RAM actually labeled "Flash,"
for the H-P 95 pocket DOS machine from 1991, and a sample of Fairchild bubble 
memory, as well, from down under.

Thank you, Mate!



POWERPOINT


We need someone who can do PowerPoint illustrations.

One in particular, building a 3-D box of 1,000 dominoes.





Additional Newsletter Services


In addition, we will provide the PG Canada Newsletter and totals from PG of 
Australia, Europe, PrePrints, etc.

You should notice that we had a very good month, with 100 books done nearly 
every single week.


These totals do NOT include 75,000+ at

httpwww.gutenberg.cc

Where there are eBooks representing over 100 languages.



The Project Gutenberg Statistical Report [As of about noon Central Daylight 
Time]



Various totals from the ~30,000 at

httpwww.gutenberg.org

and our other Project Gutenberg Sites


This week:


      day       | cnt
----------------+-----
 Sun 2009-06-14 |   6
 Mon 2009-06-15 |  13
 Tue 2009-06-16 |   2
 Wed 2009-06-17 |  16
 Thu 2009-06-18 |   6
 Fri 2009-06-19 |  12
 Sat 2009-06-20 |  13


Thanks to Marcello Perathoner!



Here are the current language totals
for languages with 200 or more eBooks.


Grand total for today: 29082

24519   English en
1434    French  fr
584     German  de
505     Finnish fi
423     Dutch   nl
402     Chinese zh
329     Portuguese      pt
241     Spanish es
200     Italian it




Not to mention PrePrints, Canada, Australia, Europe....

Total increase       +287      All Reported Languges


and from the previous month. . . .




Thanks to Greg Newby!

//////


And From Project Gutenberg Sites Worldwide [2 months]

29,082   up   283  PG General Automated Count
 1,767   up     7  PG of Australia
   637   up     6  PG of Europe
 2,021   up     0  PG PrePrints, Reserved [42],etc.
   325   up    36  PG of Canada, End of May.
======
33,832   up   320  Grand Total




Note  Without counting PrePrints, we are still over 30,000 and some of the new 
.lit collection will not make it under our current rules of addition from 
PrePrints, and would be deleted from PrePrints without moving to other 
listings.


Note  There are perhaps 100 eBooks not listed here that are already in 
circulation from Project Gutenberg.

Note  PG Canada includes English, French, and Italian.


///


Here is how we ended 2008



27,616   PG General Automated Count
 1,726   Project Gutenberg of Australia
   554   Project Gutenberg of Europe
   225   Project Gutenberg of Canada [Estimated]
         [202 up to December, no current report]
 2,431   PrePrints [Counting the 307 Chinese eBooks +111]
======   ======
32,552   Grand Total [Counting those PrePrints]




Here is how we ended 2007

The combined PG projects had produced a total of 26,161 titles.


The most number of books posted...
 ...in one day was 65 on the 26th December  ...in one week was 151 in Week 18 
(week ending 9th May)  ...in one month was 477 in November

We averaged
338 per month [Over 4,000 for the year]
 78 per week
 11.13 per day

99 titles were newly REposted to the new filing system, bringing us almost to

the 2,000 mark.


Here is a small selection of project milestones;

TOTAL Original Project Gutenberg eBooks equals about the number of books in 
the average U.S. public library
  32,500 on 20082121 [Counting the 307 Chinese Preprints]
                     [And presuming 3 after official count]
  32,000 on Calcuating
  31,500 on 20081021 [not an error, 1,777 PrePrints]
  30,000 on 20081021
  29,500 on 20080919
  29,000 ~~ Calculating
  28,500 ~~ Calculating
  28,000 ~~ 20080516
  27,500 on 20080405
  27,000 ~~ 20080229
  26,500 on 20080126
  26,000 on 20071224
  25,000 on 20071012
  24,000 on 20070710
  23,000 on 20070415

PG-AU
  1,700 on 20081010
  1,600 on 20080208
  1,500 on 20070407

PG Canada
  175 on 20080930
  100 on 20080325
  110 on 20080417




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