Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 05:55:01 +0000
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Sender: The Internet TourBus - A virtual tour of cyberspace
From: Bob Rankin
Subject: TOURBUS - 22 Feb 2000 - Project Gutenberg
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TOURBUS Volume 5, Number 69 -- 22 February 2000
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TODAY'S TOURBUS TOPIC: Project Gutenberg
TODAY'S TOURBUS STOP: http://www.promo.net/pg
Project Gutenberg began in 1971 when founder Michael Hart was given an
unexpected gift. As a joke, the computer operators at the Materials
Research Lab at the University of Illinois gave him a computer account
with $100,000,000 of computer time in it. Read on to find out how
Hart's "fortune" turned into one of the Net's greatest treasures.
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After receiving this unexpected gift, Michael thought for an hour or
so and announced that the greatest value created by computers would
not be computing, but rather the storage and retrieval of the
information that was stored in our libraries. And he also devised a
clever plan to repay his hundred-million dollar "debt".
Hart's Declaration
------------------
Hart proceeded to type in the "Declaration of Independence", and Project
Gutenberg was born. Today there over two thousand public domain works
available through Project Gutenberg, stored in three sections of
the PG Library as described below:
* Light Literature; such as Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking
Glass, Peter Pan, Aesop's Fables, etc.
* Heavy Literature; such as the Bible or other religious documents,
Shakespeare, Moby Dick, Paradise Lost, etc.
* References; such as Roget's Thesaurus, almanacs, and a set of
encyclopedia, dictionaries, etc.
Hart's philosophy was that anything entered into a computer can be
reproduced indefinitely. And theoretically, anyone in the world can have
a copy of a book that has been entered into a computer.
In an effort to make the Project Gutenberg "Etexts" as widely usable
as possible, they are available in ASCII, or plain text format. Thus,
people with most any type of computer - DOS, Apple, Atari, homebrew Z80s,
Mac, UNIX or mainframe can read the Etexts without any special software.
Here's a sample of one book that caught my eye while browsing:
"It was 2 p.m. on the afternoon of May 7, 1915. The Lusitania had
been struck by two torpedoes in succession and was sinking
rapidly, while the boats were being launched with all possible
speed. The women and children were being lined up awaiting their
turn. Some still clung desperately to husbands and fathers;
others clutched their children closely to their breasts. One girl
stood alone, slightly apart from the rest. She was quite young,
not more than eighteen. She did not seem afraid, and her grave,
steadfast eyes looked straight ahead."
-- From the opening of Secret Adversary, by Agatha Christie
Hart Speaks on Accessibility
----------------------------
"The Project Gutenberg Philosophy is to make information, books and
other materials available to the general public in forms a vast
majority of the computers, programs and people can easily read, use,
quote, and search.
Alice in Wonderland, the Bible, Shakespeare, the Koran and many
others will be with us as long as civilization... an operating system,
a program, a markup system... will not."
Project Gutenberg's team of volunteers is close to producing their 2500th
Etext, and they are working toward a goal of having 3,333 Etexts online
by the end of 2001. Some of their efforts have been hampered though, by
legislation that has extended copyrights in several countries from 50 to
70 years after the author's death. You can read more about copyright
issues on the PG site.
Getting Involved
----------------
Project Gutenberg is a volunteer organization funded by private donations
and a grant from Carnegie Mellon University. If you'd like to help in the
work of preserving and distributing public domain literature (and doing
something personal to make the Internet a richer resource) you can get
involved in a variety of ways.
Volunteers are needed to locate and scan texts, do editing, proofreading
and other jobs. And since the funds to continue this work are always
scarce, monetary donations are always welcome. If you would care to make
a donation, no matter how small, to Project Gutenberg please mail it to:
Project Gutenberg/CMU
Post Office Box 2782
Champaign, IL 61825
USA
Checks should be made out to "Project Gutenberg/CMU" and are tax
deductible to the maximum allowable by law.
Do something nice for your brain - unplug the television tonight and
pay a visit to Project Gutenberg, then search for your favorite classic
by author or title and curl up with a nice electronic book. You can
even purchase a CD containing ALL the Gutenberg etexts if you like!
http://www.promo.net/pg
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Have a good read, I'll see you next time! Do feel free to pass
along any issue of Tourbus, and tell your friends to visit the
Tourbus website to see the archives, send a free greeting card,
or play Warp the Busdriver (and his poor dog)! --Bob Rankin
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The Internet Tourbus - U.S. Library of Congress ISSN #1094-2238
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