October 2011: Loss of our Founder

by Greg Newby on October 6, 2011
PG News

Project Gutenberg

As many people are aware, Project Gutenberg’s founder passed away on September 6.  Information about the life and legacy of Michael Hart is online here: www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Michael_S._Hart

Thanks to the many fans, friends, and eBook enthusiasts who shared in our sadness of this sudden loss.  Michael will be remembered fondly, and there is no doubt that his leadership in digitization and free distribution of literature has had a lasting impact.  Part of that legacy is the ongoing activity of Project Gutenberg, which continues unabated.

I do intend to maintain this monthly newsletter, and as always the newsletter welcomes contributions of all types.

Greg Newby

New Mirroring Service

Project Gutenberg now offers mirroring capability for our generated content.  This consists of epub and other file formats which are not created “by hand,” but automatically produced.  These formats are well-suited for eBook reader devices, and quite popular.  This new offering is for people who want to do massive downloads of these files, including creating your own copy of the Project Gutenberg collection: Mirroring How-To

Get Involved

Want to help create new eBooks?  The easiest way to get started as a Project Gutenberg volunteer is with Distributed Proofreaders.  Visit: www.pgdp.net.

New Releases for September 2011

For this pat month, here are recent new publications, per GUTINDEX.ALL (“offline catalogs” at www.gutenberg.org), with thanks to volunteer Larry Copenhaver for maintaining the listing.  And, huge thanks to the many eBook producers and other volunteers who made these new eBooks possible.

[The full newsletter for October 2011 is available from our archives — MC.]

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Brian Ward December 14, 2011 at 10:53 pm

A few things I would like to see from Gutenberg are relevant statistics over time.

I’ve gleaned some of this by parsing the Gutenberg DVD contents, but I’d be interested in them from the site as a whole:

What is the total disk space used by e-book content? Of English content? Of text-only content? Of other format content (mobi, lit, pdf, etc)? Non-ebook content (audio, video, images)?

Bandwidth per month of the main site?

I think some of these statistics offer a chance to promote the scope of the work that Gutenberg is involved in. Thanks!