The Project Gutenberg Year In Review of January 7, 2009
eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since 1971
As many of you are aware, the Project Gutenberg year is from noon of the first
Wednesday of a year to the next.
Thus, I have to wait until noon today to get the finals of our various
categories, though some will not be here in time, due to the normal delays,
and will be marked.
New Project Gutenberg Landmarks and Headlines
The Complete "CIA World Factbooks"
The latest project to be completed, just last night, as a matter of fact, is
"The CIA Factbook," complete, from 1990 to 2008. It has been many years of
hunting to get all the years, and even more to reformat the files from their
originals to something easier to search.
2008, since it is still officially in flux until July 1 or thereabouts, is
still in PrePrints:
http://www.preprints.readingroo.ms/factbook2008
On July 1, the new 2009 edition will be authorized, but it usually doesn't
appear until Aug, Sep, or even Oct.
If any of you would like to keep an eye out for it, I'd greatly appreciate it,
as it sometimes appeared without any real announcements, and we'd like to get
it up with as little delay as possible.
Also, if anyone can located any pre-1990 editions, that would also be greatly
appreciated.
Project Gutenberg Is Now A Firefox Plugin
If you look through the provided list of search engines that appear in the
upper right hand of [my] Firefox you may note that along with Google, Merriam-
Webster, and a handful of others, you'll find Project Gutenberg with a place
in that list of great places to search.
Chinese Moves Into Our Top 5 List
As has been noted in our recent Monthly Newsletters, we have finally managed
to do nearly 400 eBooks in Chinese and to start to do justice to the most
spoken language.
Note: The collection of 307 Chinese Preprints eBooks I mentioned in earlier
Newsletters, has been "retired."
This means we are no longer sure they will be done, for lack of copyright
research, etc. They are still there, waiting, if you would care to see if you
can bring even just a few of them, into general circulation.
Statistical Note: I am counting the 307 in the totals, for 2008, but not
2009, since they appeared from all of the year ending a week ago. There is a
method to these madnesses, and that is that if I officially removed the 307, I
would have to move in a couple thousand that are waiting in the wings, and we
prefer to balance the year
2008 with 2009 as well as possible. So by eliminating, as it were, 307
between the official years, 2009 should still come out well ahead due to the
new thousands that will be put in PrePrints as soon as possible.
Spanish Is Our New Goal for Entry Into the Top 5 List
I desperately need some Spanish speaking people to help me!
This project is somewhat on hold, as the sponsor are still, as we speak, on
their holiday vacations.
Note: You can find many more books in other languages at:
http://www.gutenberg.cc
where there are over 75,000 books, half in other languages.
Project Gutenberg Books Equal The Average Library
We also officially passed 32,000 original Project Gutenberg eBooks this past
year, including all our usual listings.
This means the original Project Gutenberg editions now list as many book
titles as the average U.S. public library.
Reminder:
The difference between
http://www.gutenberg.org
and
http://www.gutenberg.cc
is that most of the books at gutenberg.org are put through a rigorous internal
screening, proofreading and formatting before they are ever entered into our
catalog, as WE would be responsible for correcting any errors.
The books at gutenberg.cc have been donated by other eBook producers and
eLibraries around the world, hundreds of the world's best collections are
represented. However, eBooks at gutenberg.cc are the responsibility of the
donors so we can't fix the errors without their permission, or else our
edition differs from theirs. So usually we have to wait a while as they make
various updates and corrections.
Project Gutenberg PrePrints
Please note that PrePrints now has over 2,000 books!!!
Well worth looking into:
http://www.preprints.readingroo.ms
We could use someone to write a piece about PrePrints.
The books in PrePrints are usually waiting for some final, necessary, "missing
piece" of information before complete, and ready to be entered into our
permanent catalog.
However, we don't want to deprive the general readership's access to these
books just on a technicality, one which is sometimes going to take years to
resolve, so we put them a stone's throw away from our original collection,
with some words of warning.
The News In More Detail
The times are changing, and we can either lead or follow.
If we don't lead in the field of Chinese eBooks we follow-- and we are
starting a Project Gutenberg of Chinese, for all who may wish to get in on the
ground floor.
Believe it or not, Spanish is listed as the third language, with regard to its
use on the entire Internet so that's the next goal, to bring Spanish to out
Top 5.
Our All Time Hottest Requests!!!!!!!
FLASH RAM
I am still looking for the earliest flash RAM possible.
The very earliest were PCMCIA cards, such as used for the Poqet computer, etc.
One of these for an HP is coming.
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.
POWERPOINT
We need someone who can do PowerPoint illustrations.
One in particular, building a 3-D box of 1,000 dominoes.
And in other languages.
Additional Newsletter Services
In addition, we will provide the PG Canada Newsletter and totals from PG of
Australia, Europe, PrePrints, etc.
The 2008 Statistical Year in Review
These totals do NOT include 75,000+ at
http://www.gutenberg.cc
Where there are eBooks representing over 100 languages.
These are the various totals from the ~30,000 at
http://www.gutenberg.org
and our other Project Gutenberg Sites
PrePrints
2431 [Counting the 307 Chinese eBooks]
[and 111 more as retired/promoted/published]
2009 will start without these 307 as follows:
2013 titles (approximately)
(448 other titles have been
retired/promoted/published,
and will be listed as such,
starting next Newsletter.)
2008 CIA World Factbook. The editions prior to 2008 are already in the main
collection but the 2008 edition is subject to change until mid-2008. We have
the current edition copied here, until then, as both a large .zip
(49MB) and unpacked. Added January 6, 2009.
1,726 Project Gutenberg of Australia
554 Project Gutenberg of Europe
225 Project Gutenberg of Canada [Estimated]
[202 up to December, no current report]
2,320 PrePrints [Counting the 307 Chinese eBooks]
Grand total for today: 27,616
23,374 English en
1,343 French fr
557 German de
482 Finnish fi
395 Chinese zh
380 Dutch nl
292 Portuguese pt
219 Spanish es
174 Italian it
62 Latin la
55 Esperanto eo
54 Tagalog tl
50 Swedish sv
We now have just over a dozen languages with over 50.
> From Project Gutenberg Sites Worldwide
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]
Note Without counting PrePrints, we are still 30,000 plus 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.
The next Newsletter will start with 448 less PrePrints, unless we already have
the new Chinese 2,000+ already.
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 2007
The combined PG projects had produced a total of 26,161 Today using the same
accounying methodology it's 32,552
6,391 Grand Total for 2008 [2009 subtracts 448 to start]
532.5 Per Month
17.5 Per Day
120.5 Per Week [53 Wednesdays in 2008]
I don't have all the other details yet.
Back to how we ended 2007, below.
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
32,552 on 20090107 [Counting 448 PrePrints]
32,500 on 20082121 [Counting the 307 Chinese Preprints]
[And presuming 3 after official count]
32,000 ~~ Calculating
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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pgmonthly_2009_01_07-year-in-review.txt
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