The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter February 18, 2004
eBooks Readable By Both Humans and Computers For Since 1971
Part 1
In this week's Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter:
1) Editorial
2) News and Comment
3) Notes and Queries, Reviews and Features
4) Mailing list information
Editorial
Hello,
Momentum gathers pace on the Australian copyright campaign. More on
Michaels' tour of Europe - I wonder if he's signing autographs yet?
And the A to Z reaches 'W'. Special offer this week, get to hear the
voices of two (yes, two!) Gutenbergers live in action! All this and
more below...
Happy reading,
Alice
Send feedback and suggestions to the newsletter editor at: news at pglaf.org
Founding editor: Michael Hart hart at pobox.com
Newsletter editor: Alice Wood news at pglaf.org
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2) News and Comment
Copyright proposals will affect Project Gutenberg of Australia
Taking the fight to the people this week. Col Choat, co-ordinator of
Project Gutenberg of Australia, appeared on Radio National's 'The
National Interest' last Sunday, to publicise the possible problems
with the new trade agreement. You can hear the program on the Radio
National website.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/natint/
You can get more information about Project Gutenberg of Australia and
the copyright campaign at http://www.gutenberg.net.au
Michael Hart visits Europe
Following on from Michael's comprehensive program last week, he has
spent time talking to people and giving speeches. Many thanks to
Lionel Allorge for the following link. You can hear Michael's speeches
in full at
http://media.april.org/audio/Conf-Michael-Hart-20040112/
Files in low quality (11025 Hz):
hart01a.ogg
hart02a.ogg
hart03a.ogg
Files in high quality (44100 Hz):
hart01.ogg
hart02.ogg
hart03.ogg
Each part is 45 minutes of speech.
If you need tools to read those files, you can use Audacity :
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Also, from Sebastien Blondeel we have photographs of his notes from
the above sessions (in French), the pictures are a little dark, but
perfectly readable. The first picture is of Michael in the Thalys
train this morning
http://quatramaran.ens.fr/~blondeel/ima/MH-Speeches/thumbnail/
This weeks' schedule sees Michael making a presentation to the
Frenchspeaking Parliament, Parlement de la communaut� fran�aise in
Brussels on Friday. Saturday and Sunday FREEEDEM in Brussels. (More
information from: http://freeedem.org) and finally, Monday - Political
debate and lecture in Amsterdam.
Many thanks to all the folks at http://gutenberg.nl for the above information.
Other news this week
11434 Total 02/18/04 Week #6 (43/316)
114 New This Week
101 New Last Week
87.83 Weekly Average
215 New This Month
527 New This Year
12.26 Average per day this year
3925 Projected Total for this year
71 New this week last year (02/12/03)
249 New this month last year (Feb)
358 New this year last year (2003)
$ 0.87 Trillion dollar cost/book
$ 1.41 Trillion dollar cost/book last year
7101 Etexts This Week Last Year
6 Production Weeks this Year 46 to go.
43 Production Days this Year 316 to go.
2 Production Months this Year
2355 eBooks in last 6 months (08/20/03 - 02/18/04) 26 weeks (33 - 6)
13.01 Daily Average for the last 6 months (181 production days)
1978 eBooks in the prior 6 months (02/12/03 - 08/13/03) 26 weeks (6 - 32)
10.87 Daily Average for the prior 6 months (182 production days)
5652 eBooks in the last 18 months (08/22/02 - 02/18/04) 78 weeks (33 - 6)
--------------------
Further to last weeks' piece from Tonya on love and romance, we note
the following text 'Love of flying and aircraft, the ultimate freedom.'
Love is all around.
Distributed Proofreaders Update - February 18, 2004
Have you wondered recently where DP is going to? Do things seem to be
a little disjointed lately? You are not alone. I have heard this from
more than a few people in the past couple of weeks. What is important
to recognize is that such questions are good to air and are not always
an indication of something being wrong. More often than not when an
environment feels adrift or disjointed it is an indication of a state
of flux between distinct stages of growth. This is the very type of
stage which we are passing through now at DP.
In past weeks we have highlighted some of the transformations taking
place. The origins of these changes stretch back well before the new
year and they will yet require a good deal more time before they
settle into definitive daily patterns. It is at such times as this
that we all need to draw closer together and not slip into a general
sense of disorientation. Being distributed has powerful benefits when
our mutual skills and efforts are applied to specific tasks. Yet that
same distribution can work against us as a community, if we are not
active in reaching out to each other in transitional or turbulent
times.
We are heading for some interesting destinations in the months
ahead. During this time DP will be expanding and innovating into
untried regions. We have always done this and by staying dedicating to
growth and innovation we have made this project an impressive
success. If there is a distinction about the present time it may be
that the scope and pace of development is broader and faster than in
previous times of change. Together we can deal with this.
At this same time we are also witnessing an international expansion to
the PG infrastructure and the rise of a completely new Distributed
Proofreaders through the Rastko network of archives. This is a
monumental change, and we need to be sensitive to all the ways these
developments will effect us as a diverse and dispersed community of
thousands working towards the same objective.
In my view what we need this week is a little less focus upon the news
and a little more focus upon who we are and who we are becoming as a
working community. Project Gutenberg established something very unique
in history and very natural to the open nature of this
medium. Distributed Proofreaders opened the work of PG up to a vastly
wider audience of contributors than was ever imagined. Together, the
two projects have become something new in themselves that was not
foreseen--perhaps even a new social model.
We can travel from PG to PGEU and from DP to DPEU or to any mix among
the four and we will find familiar faces. "Who's who?" and "What's
what?" is causing more than a little confusion these days. It seems
like it shouldn't but it is ... and it is up to each us working
together to puzzle our way through this labyrinth. More often than
not, what were once two distinctive projects are growing harder to
discern. This has been underscored most recently by the developing
projects in Europe.
I thought about whether or not to open this discussion in the
newsletter or in the forums. The newsletter is the better choice
because it reaches across all the projects related to PG ... and this
is what we need to do; reach across. So in order to achieve that, we
are going to do something different with this week's column. We are
going to make it interactive and let a broad mix of readers
participate in the discussion. To do this will require two editions of
the column; and early and a late one. The first you are reading
now,and the second will be published on the newsletter archive as well
as in the two DP forums.
The interactive elements will take place in the Culture & History
forum, where we all can discuss these topics at great length. Now this
is a new idea, and untried, so bear with the bumps that are sure to
occur, and where you feel it helpful, join in and enrich this
important discussion. The future of PG belongs to the world. We each
have a stake in that future. We each have a say. What I am trying to
do here is provide a shape and form for that important conversation.
Stay tuned! Watch for the Late Edition in the Promotional forum.
For now...
Thierry Alberto
Radio Gutenberg Update
www.gutenberg.net/audio
channel 1 - Sherlock Holmes "The Sign of Four"
channel 2 - Robert Sheckley's "Bad Medicine"
Both are high quality live readings from the collection.
Testing of Radio Gutenberg audio books on demand is currently taking
place.
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3) Notes and Queries, Reviews and Features
A to Z - W
'W' has a wealth (sorry) of goodies for us.
Starting with the author catalogue we find Richard Wagner, who has six
volumes in the collection including both volumes of the
'Correspondence Of Wagner And Liszt'. Appropriately, Alfred Russel
Wallace, 'Is Mars Habitable?' Methinks we shall find out soon
enough. Although I have seen the film many times I shall be
downloading Lew Wallace's, 'Ben-Hur; a tale of the Christ' fairly
shortly. There are so many authors under 'W' that it will be hard to
do them all justice, of course, we have H.G. Wells, Oscar Wilde and
P. G. Wodehouse, and we would urge you, if you are not already
familiar with works by these authors to go out and read them. My
intention here is to blow off some of the dust on texts that perhaps,
we would not immediately think to read, such as, George Whale,
'British Airships, Past, Present, And Future'. In this book, which
seems to have been written just after the Great War, the author gives
an account of how the airship industry began and the major players in
airship technology. He also looks at the different types of airship
and gives an explanation as to the main design features, handy should
you ever feel the desire to build your own. A very interesting text to
find.
There are several large collections by 'W' authors. One which caught
my eye was John Greenleaf Whittier. Now my total knowledge here is
zero, but the titles are enough to make you think. 'Complete
Anti-Slavery, Labor and Reform, From Volume III., The Works of
Whittier: Anti-Slavery Poems and Songs of Labor and Reform',
'Narrative and Legendary Poems: Pennsylvania Pilgrim and Others From
Volume I., The Works of Whittier', just two from a list of
many. Further research finds that Whittier, the son of a Quaker, was a
very strong supporter of the anti-slavery movement in the 19th
Century. The volumes mentioned are collections of just some of the
many verses and poems he wrote in support of this cause. Slightly,
tongue in cheek we end this look at authors with Gideon Wurdz, 'The
Foolish Dictionary: An exhausting work of reference to un-certain
English words, their origin, meaning, legitimate and illegitimate use,
confused by a few pictures [not included]', I suspect that might be
useful here at the newsletter desk.
In the volumes whose titles begin with 'W' we have 'Waltzing Matilda',
a fairly recent aquistion, being an MP3 file from Roger McGuinn. 'War
And Peace' by Tolstoy, 'Wars and Empire' by Sam Vaknin, who is an
occasional contributor to this very newsletter. The epic 'Waverley' by
Sir Walter Scott, Thoreau's 'A Week On The Concord And Merrimack
Rivers', 'Welsh Fairy Tales' by William Elliot Griffis, along with
'Welsh Fairy-Tales And Other Stories', Edited by P. H. Emerson, 'What
Katy Did Next' by Susan Coolidge, which seemed to be compulsary
reading when I was little (oh so long ago!), 'William Harvey And The
Circulation Of The Blood' by Thomas Henry Huxley, which sounds
fascinating. We finish this section with two more classics 'William
Tell Overture, Pt. 2' by Sodero's Band, this another MP3 file and a
recent aquisition from the Edison National Historic Archive and the
brilliant 'The Wind In The Willows', by Kenneth Grahame, a reprint
sits on the shelf to my right, it may just move before next week. One
last thing, it is in my contract to mention Helen M. Winslow,
Concerning Cats. As you can see there is a real wealth of material
gathered under 'W' and I would urge you to investigate further.
As you may know, one of Project Gutenberg's focuses (foci?) is the
diversification into languages other than English. The catalogue
features the following tomes in Welsh:
Owen M. Edwards, Yr Hwiangerddi and Cartrefi Cymru.
Hughes, Ceiriog, Ceiriog
Twm o'r Nant (Thomas Edwards), Gwaith Twm o'r Nant and Cyfrol.
And finally, we point you at 'Who Is..' on the newsletter website to
find out who some of our hard working volunteers are including Dr
David Widger, who has several collections of quotations gathered from
texts as they go through the production process available in the
catalogue, and who just never seems to sleep these days.
Window in Heaven Dust Jacket - Brett Fishburne
Brett recently found a copy of "Window in Heaven" by Margaret Bell
Houston. The front and rear portions of the dust cover were taped to
the inside of the front and rear covers of the book. Not being one to
pass up an opportunity to preserve a little history we present it here.
Front:
For a long time Eden Merihew had dreamed of a house of her own. She
had gone over in her mind again and again the plans for her "window in
heaven." Eden was in love with Larry Carrothers, a gay, carefree lad,
and together they planned their future in a beautifyl dream
house. Every detail was selected with utmost care, not even the broom
closet was forgotten. Feeling safe in a blissful futuer with Larry,
Eden saved a part of her salary toward her trousseau, spent her free
afternoons repainting furniture, and was extremely happy. But she had
not counted on Rosamond Earle, the girl who had always gotten
everything she wanted. Rosamond got Larry--and the dream house
crashed. Eden went to New Mexico to recover, and there she met Bruce
Hardie, and artist, whom she fell in love with and married. Returning
home she found that an anonymous donor had given her the dream house,
built according to her own specifications. The gift came through the
hands of a law firm, and no amount of questioning revealed its
source. Eden thought it might have been her Uncle Peter, but then it
was rumored that Larry Carrothers, her former fiance, was responsible
for the gift. And when Rosamond accuses Eden of accepting the house
from Larry, Bruce believes the accusation and leaves his wife. Who
built the dream house for Eden? What becomes of her marriage to Bruce?
Mrs. Houston writes brilliantly, and presents the story in a very real
fashion. Set against the background of a Texas town, "Window in Heaven
is a charming romance with an entirely unusual twist.
Back:
Margaret Bell Houston has Texas in her blood. Her grandfather was
fighting Sam Houston, the "Buckskin Colossus," Chief of the Cherokees,
and the founder of Texas. Miss Houston was born there at Ceder Bayou,
the daughter of Dr. Samuel Houston, physician and journalist, and Lucy
Anderson Houston, poet. One of her first memories is of her father
being introduced on the speaker's platform as the son of Sam
Houston. "I am too small a man to wear the mantle of Sam Houston," he
had said. "On me it would drag in the dust." Some time later, the
diminuitive Miss Houston was invited in a spirit of jollity to speak
to another assemblage. "I am too little," she declaimed, remembering
her father's words, "to wear Sam Houston's blanket. If I was to put it
on it would get all dirty."
Quiz
The answers to last week's quick quiz are:
1-c, 2-b, 3-c, 4-a, 5-d
Honourable mention to Les Bowler, who didn't get them all right, but
did beat the editor who only got one right.
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Current Subscription Numbers as at end January 2004
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Credits
Thanks this week to Brett and George for the numbers and the
booklists. Thierry, Brett, everyone who sent in something about
Michael's European trip, Col, Greg, Michael and Larry Wall, plus the
newsletter backroom staff and the DP squirrels. Entertainment for the
workers provided as usual by BBC 6Music and Andrew Collins
pgweekly_2004_02_18_part_1.txt
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