eBooks: 2009 – 6,909 living languages in the Ethnologue
6,909 living languages were cataloged in the 16th edition (2009) of “The Ethnologue: Languages of the World”, an encyclopedic reference work freely available on the web since 1996, with a print book for sale.
As stated by Barbara Grimes, its editor from 1971 to 2000, the Ethnologue is “a catalog of the languages of the world, with information about where they are spoken, an estimate of the number of speakers, what language family they are in, alternate names, names of dialects, other socio-linguistic and demographic information, dates of published Bibles, a name index, a language family index, and language maps." (NEF Interview)
A core team of researchers in Dallas, Texas, has been helped by thousands of linguists gathering and checking information worldwide. A new edition of the Ethnologue is published approximately every four years.
The Ethnologue has been an active research project since 1950. It was founded by Richard Pittman as a catalog of minority languages, to share information on language development needs around the world with his colleagues at SIL International and other language researchers.
eBooks: 2001 – Broadband became the norm
Henk Slettenhaar has extensive knowledge of communication technology, with a long career in Geneva, Switzerland, and California. Ten years after getting a broadband connection at home, he reads ebooks on a Kindle or an iPad.
Henk joined CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Geneva in 1958 to work with the first digital computer. He was involved in the development of CERN’s first digital networks.
His U.S. experience began in 1966 when he joined a team at SLAC (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center) for 18 months to build a film digitizer. Returning to SLAC in 1983, he designed a digital monitoring system, which was used for more than ten years.
For 25 years he tought information technology at Webster University, Geneva. He is the former head of the Telecom Management Program created in fall 2000. He also worked as a consultant for a number of international organizations.
eBooks: 2000 – Cotres.net, works of digital literature
A writer and musician, Jean-Paul has offered beautiful works of digital literature, while searching how hyperlinks could expand his writing towards new directions.
In October 1998, Jean-Paul switched from being a print author to being an hypermedia author, and created cotres.net (“cotres” could be translated by “cutters” in English) as a website “telling stories in 3D”, either French-language stories or plurilingual stories.
Jean-Paul also enjoyed the freedom of online self-publishing. He explained in June 2000: “The internet allows me to do without intermediaries, such as record companies, publishers and distributors. Most of all, it allows me to crystallize what I have in my head: the print medium (desktop publishing, in fact) only allows me to partly do that. (…) Surfing the web is like radiating in all directions (I am interested in something and I click on all the links on a home page) or like jumping around (from one click to another, as the links appear). You can do this in the written media, of course. But the difference is striking. So the internet changed how I write. You don’t write the same way for a website as you do for a script or a play. (…)
Project Gutenberg 40th Year Special Projects
We have several special projects we will be starting on or around July 4, and if you have a project you like to work on, why not send us a note and see if we can get a team of volunteers to help.
Our newest project is to solicit suggestions where this project should be in it’s 50th year. Suggestions are:
- Make it more obvious that PG wants error messages–how to write them, where to send them, etc.
- Make it more obvious that PG will send DVD’s so the people who have to pay by the megabyte can use PG.
- An extensive library of human read audiobooks.
- Please make it more obvious how to do PG eBooks for Kindle, Sony, nook, and other eReaders.
- More current books under Creative Commons licenses. More apps for cellphones. A model to encourage new writers to share their work in the same spirit. Showcase how people who used to be on the bad sides of various digital divides enjoyed and benefitted.
- Please add more bookshelves, particularly one to do eBooks from each country and make sure each one has at least one eBook to show how it can be done.
- Proofread the Top 100 or so downloaded books to the point where we they approach perfection.
So right now I’d like as many volunteers as possible to let me know if they would like to proofread Top Tens.