Liza Sabater

>Hi Liza,
>What is Project Gutenberg?

For all of you who do not know about PG,

Project Gutenberg is an invaluable source, not only to homeschoolers
but to all people. I have been using it since 1994 and had access to
it through Compuserve (we did not have Mozilla, the precursor to
Netscape, at the time). In Internet years, 8 years are 2 years short
of a "brick-and-mortar" eon.

The following is what I have cut and pasted from one of their
e-mails. For more information on Project Gutenberg (and to download
books), please go to <http://promo.net/pg>.



ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG

At 11:02 -0400 26.9.02, Michael Hart wrote:
>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.

At 11:02 -0400 26.9.02, Michael Hart wrote:
>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]




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