The Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter December 5, 2003 Books Readable By Both Humans and Computers For Since 1971 In this issue of the Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter Part 2: 1) Editorial 2) News 3) Radio Gutenberg update 4) Mailing list information Hello, Hey! Look, it's a desk! Wow! And I thought my computer was balanced on a big pile of paper. I see someone's tided up too, oh, and are those clean mugs. Gosh, even the strange looking thing in the fridge that we had forgotten about has gone. Oh well, there goes the mold growing experiment. Isn't it amazing what having someone else around can do for the place. Well, it is nice to be back after two weeks away, not that I actually got to go anywhere (Boo!). I have been looking at a few newsletter related things though, and hopefully, you will notice a few improvements. Not least of which will be my nice new, never used (no surprise there) spellchecker! I was looking through some old newsletters to sort out some features for the website, and I think I probably have the most forgiving audience ever. There are so many spelling mistakes, and almost no-one corrects me. I think I could probably count the emails on one finger in fact. I have to admit to some surprise at this given the way almost every person in PG I have contact with leaps in with corrections to mine, and indeed, everyone elses mistakes at any given opportunity. I look forward to a rapid improvement in my spelling starting roundabout now.Happy reading, Alice send email to the newsletter editor at: news@pglaf.org Founding editor: Michael Hart hart@beryl.ils.edu Newsletter editor: Alice Wood news@pglaf.org Project Gutenberg CEO: Greg Newby gbnewby@pglaf.org Project Gutenberg website: http://gutenberg.net Project Gutenberg Newsletter website: http://gutenberg.net/newsletter Hosted by iBiblio, The Public's Library at http://ibiblio.org Radio Gutenberg: http://www.radio-gutenberg.org Distributed Proofreaders: http://www.pgdp.net Newsletter and mailing list subscriptions: http://gutenberg.net/subs.shtml ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ============= [ SUBMIT A NEW EBOOK FOR COPYRIGHT CLEARANCE ]============== If you have a book you would like to confirm is in the public domain in the US, and therefore suitable for Project Gutenberg, please do the following: 1. Check whether we have the eBook already. 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For more information, including several other ways to donate, go to http://www.gutenberg.net or email gbnewby@ils.unc.edu ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) News A Free Public Discussion at the Berkeley Public Library Thursday December 11 2003 7:00 pm THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE OF PROJECT GUTENBERG A Presentation by Michael Hart, Founder of Project Gutenberg and Greg Newby, Project Gutenberg CEO Visit the Berkeley Public Library any time during the week of December 8 to pick up a free CD containing nearly 3,500 of the Project Gutenberg eBooks, or a DVD with nearly 9,400. Make copies, and help spread free literature! Prof. Hart will present a perspective of the decade it took to move from 100 eBooks on this date in 1993 to over 100 times as many today, and the hopes to reach ONE MILLION eBooks a decade or so from now. Furthermore, he will outline how each of us can help build such a worldwide public eLibrary. Come hear how you can get your own library of 10,000 eBooks on your computer, and how free eBooks can help change the world! This is the 33rd year Project Gutenberg eBooks have been available on the Internet and they can always be downloaded free of charge from hundreds of sites around the world. Prof. Hart hopes that in another 33 years nearly any public domain work requested can be made available, including books, newspapers, magazines, music, paintings, sculpture [including 3-D] and all other forms of media. The premise on which Michael Hart based Project Gutenberg was: "Anything that can be put into a computer can be reproduced indefinitely." He calls this "Replicator Technology". The concept of Replicator Technology is simple; once these items are stored in a computer, then any number of copies can and will be made available. Everyone in the world can have as many copies as they want. Even space travellers, such as NASA Astronaut Shannon Lucid, have taken Project Gutenberg CDs on record breaking journeys. Project Gutenberg now has over 10,000 eBooks online at gutenberg.net Prof. Hart can be contacted directly at: hart@pobox.com ------------------- Newletter Changes and Website Changes Following my two weeks leave, where I seem to have done even more work than normal, you should notice a few changes around the place to improve our service. One of them you won't notice unless I tell you and that is the automation of our email newsletters. Before almost everything on the newsletter was done by a human, now hopefully only the article writing will be (although one of our correspondents has asked for an article writing machine in their Christmas present list), this means that you should get your newsletter at the same time each week. What thia should also mean is that as we will have more time to spend on them, the article writing quality should be more consistent. The other change is to the newsletter website, which while still not quite there, has filled out dramatically over the last few days. Every feature the newsletter has carried during my editorship is now up there, along with the reviews and other articles of interest. I hope to get the last few bells and whistles sorted during this week so it's all bright and shiny for December 10th. Alice ------------------- Other news items this week PG gains a new mirror site. Welcome to our newest mirror: http://www.sakoman.net/gutenberg Located in San Jose, California. Thanks to Steve Sakoman. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- --WHERE TO GET EBOOKS http://www.gutenberg.net allows searching by title, author, language and subject. Mirrors (copies) of the complete collection are available around the world. These sites and indices are not updated instantly, as additional research may need to be done by our professional Chief Cataloguer, so for those who wish to obtain these new ebooks, please refer to the following section. --"INSTANT" ACCESS TO EBOOKS Use your Web browser or FTP program to visit our master download site (or a mirror) if you know the filename you want. Try: http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext04 or ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext04 and look for the first five letters of the filesname. Note that updated eBooks usually go in their original directory (e.g., etext99, etext00, etc.) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Radio Gutenberg Update Radio Gutenberg Update http://www.radio-gutenberg.org channel 1 - Sherlock Holmes "The Sign of Four" channel 2 - Robert Sheckley's "Bad Medicine" Both are high quality live readings from the collection. Jon and I are working on a new service for Project Gutenberg to create an audio book on demand from any of the 10,000+ books in the collection. This service will be available at http://www.radio-gutenberg.org shortly. Anyone needing an audio book of a gutenberg book will be able to create it for themselves on the web, right when they have the need for it. Mike E ------------------- Distributed Proofreaders Update test file ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Improved Service In a bid to make the newsletter more helpful to readers who may be using screen reading software. We are able to offer the booklisting in a different format to make your life a little easier. An example of the changed listing is given below. If you would like either a daily or weekly version of this list please email news@pglaf.org, and state which version you require. {Note to the unwary: this is an example.} 34 NEW ETEXTS FROM PROJECT GUTENBERG US A Complete Grammar of Esperanto, by Ivy Kellerman Mar 2005[esperxxx.xxx]7787 The Female Gamester, by Gorges Edmond Howard Apr 2005[fmgstxxx.xxx]7840 [Subtitle: A Tragedy] A Primary Reader, by E. Louise Smythe Apr 2005[preadxxx.xxx]7841 [Also posted: illustrated HTML, zipped only - pread10h.zip] The Rise of Iskander, by Benjamin Disraeli Apr 2005[?riskxxx.xxx]7842 [7-bit version with non-accented characters in 7risk10.txt and 7risk10.zip] [8-bit version with accented characters in 8risk10.txt and 8risk10.zip] [rtf version with accented characters in 8risk10r.rtf and 8risk10r.zip] [rtf version has numbered paragraphs; txt version has no paragraph numbers] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DISTRIBUTED PROOFREADERS NEEDS CONTENT, PROOFERS AND SCANNER TYPES Please contact us at: dphelp@pgdp.net if you would like to know more about the Distributed Proofreaders. Please visit the site: http://www.pgdp.net for more information about how you can help, by proofreading just a few pages per day. 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