Project Gutenberg Newsletter February 2026

February 2, 2026

Newsletters

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Contents

Mourning -> Celebrating
Tributes and Thanks from our community
A new feature: ARK linking
Our finances
New Releases at Gutenberg.org — January 2026
Links

Mourning -> Celebrating

Greg Newby left us in October; we’ve had a mourning box on our homepage since. Greg’s birthday was February 9th, so it seemed like an appropriate moment to turn from mourning his passing to celebrating his accomplishments, while working to continue them. So, Happy Birthday Greg, we miss you! There are birthday cakes on our homepage now.

Tributes and Notes from our Community

Biography on our website

From the eServices for Citizens team, a department of the Youkon Territory government, Greg’s ‘day job’:

About Greg: A lot of people might not know that Greg was also eService’s informally official beach volleyball team captain! Our department has an annual staff barbecue and beach volleyball tournament. Greg was always the first to put out a call to get everyone out at lunch to practice before the event.

Quoted from the Greg. B. Newby article article at Wikipedia:

Newby served as a co-organizer for the conference Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) for many years. He presented about hacker ethics in 2000 and “hacker” as a positive term in 2002. At HOPE XV in 2024, he spoke about opportunities to mitigate climate change.

Presenting at the HAL2001 Hackers At Large conference, held at the University of Twente near Enschede, The Netherlands in August of 2001:

Presentation title: “Hacker Ethics: How to Teach them, and What they Are”. One of the great quotes from the 45 minutes presentation is Writing code can instrument our ethics. Watch the full presentation here: https://youtu.be/sYfYqDPYhWc

From John Guagliardo, Project Gutenberg Board Member

Greg carried forward Michael Hart’s vision with extraordinary dedication, building the infrastructure, partnerships, and volunteer networks that sustained Project Gutenberg for decades. Yet his life was equally defined by an extraordinary passion for endurance and the outdoors. Greg was an avid ultramarathon runner, competing in numerous races, marathons, and grueling ultras that tested body and spirit. His love for pushing limits extended to the far north, where he and his wife Ilana ran StinkyPup Kennel, a sled dog rescue operation in Whitehorse, Yukon (and earlier in Alaska). He participated in dog sled races—including 100-mile events and Arctic ultramarathons—often enduring extreme conditions, even frostbite to his toes. Caring for dozens of retired huskies over the years, Greg embodied resilience, community, and generosity in both his digital work and his adventures on trails and snow. These pursuits weren’t separate from his Project Gutenberg role; they reflected the same optimistic, never-give-up ethos that kept him volunteering unpaid for 25 years, always ready for the next challenge—whether digitizing texts or mushing through the wilderness.

Notes sent with donations

This donation is in loving memory of Greg Newby. I’m so grateful to have worked with Greg. Greg is truly inspirational, a wonderful role model, and a kind person. Sending my heartfelt condolences to Ilana and all of Greg’s family and friends.
In memory of Greg Newby, a wonderful colleague.
In memory of Dr. Greg Newby. Thanks for the fries with mustard & introducing me to the world of public domain books.
I didn’t know Greg, but the description I just read about him makes him sound irreplaceable. That being said, please try!
In Memory of Greg Newby in support of his wife Ilana. May his work and contributions continue on.
In honor of Greg Newby. Greg was my classmate and friend at Schreiber High School. I last saw Greg at our 2013 reunion where, along with our friends, we danced to our favorite 80’s music.
When I was 10, My father gave me a set of Dave Dawson books that were his when he was a child. I just found them on your site. Now they are on my ebook reader. I think there are a couple I didn’t have. Time to go down memory lane.
Donation is given with love in memory of my cousin Greg Newby.
Sad to hear of the passing of Greg Newby. Sorry it’s not much. Hope his loved ones are taking care of themselves as best they can.
In the memory of Greg Newby whom I was honored to know, and for the persistence of PG.
In memory of GREG NEWBY and his work to enable literacy. Thank you from a grateful recipient.
To honor Greg Newby! May his spirit and important work continue to drive literacy and opportunities for those without! We pledge our ongoing support.
We were very sorry to hear about the passing of Dr. Newby. His legacy will be remembered.

(about 30 other messages were variants of “In memory of Greg.”)

That is pretty rough. I wish him the best, although I have no idea what “prayers” are or would do.
Much thanks to Greg and what he has done for PG.
This is a project that has quietly influenced my career and life as well as the lives and technology and careers of many others.
Greg Newby has also been serving generously as Editor for the Open Grid Forum for many years, guiding many groups through the process of creating the many public documents available at https://ogf.org/documents and lately contributing to uploading standards ready for broader adoption to other standards developing organizations. We appreciate these contributions deeply and also wish to convey our deep thanks and regards.
Thank you @gbnewby I am really grateful for your generous work.
I know @gbnewby from his time as CTO of #ComputeCanada during a time where we went from having thirty-plus #HPC clusters of various sizes in >20 data centres to having only four big systems in as many data centres. My thoughts go out to Greg and his family and I wish them all the strength they need in such a difficult time!

From readers of the Globe and Mail obituary

Thank you for this obituary of Mr. Newby. I’ve used the Project Gutenberg website many times. It’s the important result of a noble ambition. - Faustus
What a legacy of accomplishment Greg Newby leaves us. Project Gutenberg is an amazing contribution to humanity. - T. Stewart2

Comments via Hacker News

I’m shocked and saddened to hear this. Greg was a deep source of knowledge and support as I started and shepherded Standard Ebooks. He was generous with his time and experience, and unbelievably patient with me, some guy he had never heard of or met before who was just another cold-email in what must have been an endless stream in his inbox. We should all aspire to his high spirit of camaraderie, charity, and kindness. The world has lost a champion of both literature and the free web. - acabal
RIP. Project Gutenberg and IMSLP are two of my favourite websites. Every January, when new works enter the public domain, I go and download a bunch of books and sheet music. HN readers, let’s not forget to donate to these websites that keep the Internet worth surfing. - Mastazi
Please also accept my condolences and best wishes - I’ve known Greg since the earliest HOPE conventions. - rsync
Every year, Project Gutenberg becomes a little closer to giving us access to every book worth reading, often in multiple editions and languages. It’s a treasure. - sevensor
Genuinely saddened by this. I had Dr. Newby for a Linux admin class in college in the late 90s and it was one of the courses that got me interested in systems administration. I remember him as patient, kind, and enthusiastic about open-source and the possibilities Linux represented for changing the Internet. - Castillar76
I am very sad to hear this. Greg was my mentor during my first internship at the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center in Fairbanks Alaska back in the very early 2000s. - JoeMattie
I met Greg when I was an undergraduate at Syracuse University and he was earning his PhD. I helped out a bit with some of the graphics programming for his thesis. Greg was a class act, always patient and kind. It was super helpful to me when I went to UIUC for graduate schools and he showed up as a faculty member there; he knew how to get access to campus resources and was more willing to help me than faculty in my own department. He was a model. RIP. - razeh
Met him at HAL 2001, volunteered together a bit there. I think he was heading the speakers herald team I was part of. First encounter with the hacker conference scene, he guided me wisely. Patient and kind indeed. He’s the reason I kept going around European hacking / free software events. I owe him cultural discoveries, long lasting friendships and tech partnerships. Very saddened by this news. So far the thread is full of similar interactions with him. That person changed so many lives, by his contributions to culture and technology but more importantly (?) because he had tremendous impacts on the lives of many people he took time to interact with. I know that these threads are always full of “this recently deceased people made the world a better place”. I lived with him 4 days 24 years ago so I can’t say I knew him…but I know I wouldn’t be writing this about more “famous” people I interacted with. So long, and thanks for all the fish. - karmabahh
Greg Newby was also very actively involved in the production of the HOPE Conference. If there’s a broadcast tonight, Off The Hook (AKA The Hacker Radio Show) show on WBAI (99.5 FM in NY) and wbai.org will almost certainly be in his honor. -ethangnawl
I will cherish his email response to me when I emailed PG about a donation issue a few years ago and he helped resolve the situation. I remain grateful to PG for their amazing work. RIP Greg. - abawany
I did some volunteer work with/for Greg a lifetime ago. He will be missed, and the world is a better place due to his work. - toomuchtodo
Well that’s a bummer, not even terribly old. I never met the guy but I love Gutenberg. Back before I had any money it was always this constant force that would be guaranteed to provide something entertaining. - tombert
Sad. I grew up in Champaign-Urbana and remember attending a talk he was giving about Prairienet. - Bobanrocky
RIP. Thanks for making this world a tiny bit better - gyc

Greg was always incredibly kind and supportive of everyone and made HOPE so welcoming. Absolutely a real one. What a loss. - alreadyburnt
Greg was always kind at HOPE and, when not running around like mad (because being staff at a con is like that) was always both pleasant and fun to talk to. I always made sure to thank him at the end of every HOPE I went to. - virtualadept
It’s hard to believe it’s been only two years since Emmanuel and Kyle went up to Yukon to assist Greg in a dog sledding competition. A good reminder to take nothing for granted. RIP to a great one. - D…_spawner126
My heart bleeds for the loss of Mr. Newby. Sadly, I never got the honor to meet him. He was an inspiration to myself & many others! May he never be forgotten for all the great work he has done on this planet. R.I.P. Greg - digitalwatch_tower
Thank you all. Project Gutenberg is a heritage for humanity. - Marco Bolognini
I love love love your project. Thank you, Dr. Newby. May you rest in peace. -Eugene Abramchuk
RIP. It’s sad when relatively young people die. - Marko Tosevski
Project Gutenberg gives me access to old books not available through my local library’s inner-library-loan system. Thank you all for giving me such a wonderful digital library. -Karen Martin
I worked with Dr. Newby at the University of Illinois. He mentored a great many people. He taught a class on how to set up information services–including how to set up and configure NCSA HTTPD. This wasn’t taught in the CS department at the time, so many CS students came over to Library Science to learn about it. - Todd Markle
Thank you for the Gutenberg texts made available to everyone. -Catherine Diamond
The real Internet heroes. - Miklos Kallo
We owe him a great debt. - Anna Kamaralli
Used your books for years perhaps decades. Incredible results! Thank you for all your years of work and accomplishments. - Brian L Altonen
Greg led the document preparation process for @OpenGridForum for nearly two decades and helped in many ways from small to large in getting the majority of the publications in https://ogf.org/documents reviewed by the community and published for the betterment of the community. He was a tremendous contributor and friend, and he will be missed. - OpenGridForum
The entire @openlibrary.org team would like to express our deep sadness at the loss of our friend Greg Newby who, for years, has seeded @gutenberg.org with public good, open access values worth continuing to follow. Thank you for your beautiful contributions. You are missed. -Brewster Kahle
Thank you, Greg, your accomplishments on Project Gutenberg were substantial, good natured, and selfless. Following our good friend Michael Hart on the vision of having all books available in all languages, the PG set was the starting point for every ereader, every AI project, every digital humanities project.
I remember him as the guy who insisted fries with mustard are great. He was kind of right & kind of wrong because mayonnaise & mustard was better . Ofc also introduced me into the world of public domain (e)-books & Gutenberg project. Will make some fries with mustard in his honour. My condolences to his friends & family
We are deeply saddened by the loss of Greg Newby, who led Project Gutenberg with passion and purpose. Greg’s belief in free and open access to knowledge continues to inspire us and so many others working to preserve our shared culture online. - Internet Archive
Lots of online public-good projects don’t outlast their founders. I’m grateful for Greg Newby’s leadership of Project Gutenberg, which has been crucial for sustaining the project for years both before and after Michael Hart’s passing. Now I mourn Greg’s own passing, and wish the best for Eric Hellman and the Project Gutenberg board, volunteers, and contributors to keep providing free, accessible literature online for many more years to come. - John Mark Ockerbloom
We join others in mourning the loss of Dr. Greg Newby, Project Gutenberg’s leader. We are indebted to @gutenberg.org ’s essential and historic role to make published materials available online and to Greg’s leadership for helping digital libraries evolve and thrive throughout the decades. -HathiTrust
Thank you Dr. Newby, for leading Project Gutenberg so thoughtfully. You have left us with the gift of abundance, and we are better read and informed for it. May your memory be even more of a blessing than it already is.
This is just gut-wrenching! I know @gbnewby from his time as CTO of #ComputeCanada during a time where we went from having thirty-plus #HPC clusters of various sizes in >20 data centres to having only four big systems in as many data centres. My thoughts go out to Greg and his family and I wish them all the strength they need in such a difficult time!

From Eric (PG’s Executive Director)

I thought about Greg this morning. I ran a 5K race called the “Penguin Pace”. I came in 7th (of 12) in my age group. It was 8°F at the start. In my running club there are people who have run umpteen marathons (I’ve run one) and folks who do triathlons and ultramarathons. One friend recently did a 100-miler. I used to brag to them that I knew a guy who ran ARCTIC ULTRAS!!! That was Greg. Arctic ultramarathons are multi-day races where you have to pull your gear on a sled behind you so that you can stop and rest without freezing to death. After Greg had to quit halfway one time due to frostbite, he tried the next year and finished! Compared to that, my race was a balmy walk in the park. Thank you Greg, for pulling Project Gutenberg for so long and doing it so well.

A new feature: `ARK` linking

Archival Resource Keys (ARKs) serve as persistent identifiers, or stable, trusted references for information objects. Among other things, they aim to be web addresses (URLs) that don’t return 404 Page Not Found errors.

End users, especially researchers, rely on ARKs for long term access to the global scientific and cultural record. Since 2001 some 15.3 billion ARKs have been created by over 1700 organizations — libraries, data centers, archives, museums, publishers, government agencies, and vendors.

In January, Project Gutenberg joined the world of ARKs. This means that if you know Project Gutenberg’s number for a book, for example, “Pride and Prejudice” is # 1342, You can use that number from any ARK resolving system. So, for example, while you would normally use the url https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1342 to get the book’s landing page, you can also use https://www.gutenberg.org/ark:/64303/1342. Now that’s not very interesting. But because ARKs can be resolved by any ARK resolver, you can also use https://n2t.net/ark:/64303/1342 or if you want to use the resolver in France, https://ark.bnf.fr/ark:/64303/1342. (64303 is the number that identifies Project Gutenberg)

Greg Newby decided that Project Gutenberg should support ARKs, because of the potential benefit of preserving PG content into the future, because ARK is a free and open system, unlike, for example ISBN. We had a test version running last summer, but there were snags putting it into production, and then other things happened.

Project Gutenberg has a long history of innovation and support for free and open systems that help to preserve its content, and ARK implementation is a continuation of that tradition.

Our Finances and New Address

This past week, we sent emails or letters to about 200 donors of $100 or more, which can be used for tax purposes. If you don’t receive yours within a week and need a letter, please email donate@gutenberg.org.

As you must know, Project Gutenberg is a dynamic, impactful organization that does amazing work sending out over a million free ebooks a day. It has a small budget (which we hope to grow!) financed mostly by small donations from over a thousand users, ranging from the 5 dollar bill we recently received in the mail from a schoolgirl in East Setauket, NY to slightly larger donations.

We’ve posted our recently-filed IRS Form 990 return for our fiscal year ending June 30, 2025 on the website. It shows donation income of $117,756 (not bad!) and a deficit of -23,397 (not good). On the bright side, donations for the current fiscal year are up by ~30% over last year (very good!). The closure of our Salt Lake City office will save us a lot of money. (sad, but necessary.)

If you want to send us paper mail, the address is:

Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

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New Releases at Gutenberg.org — January 2026

In the last month PGLAF added another 233 new public domain eBooks to the PG catalog. Of the new books, 146 were added by PGDP. Thank you to all the volunteers who have helped to make these new titles freely available to the world.

January 1