[gweekly] PT1B Weekly Project Gutenberg Newsletter
Michael Hart
hart at pglaf.org
Wed Apr 5 09:11:41 PDT 2006
pt1b5.306
Weekly_April_05.txt
**The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, April 05, 2006 PT1**
*******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971********
PT1B
Newsletter editors needed! Please email hart at pobox.com or gbnewby at pglaf.org
Anyone who would care to get advance editions: please email hart at pobox.com
***Continuing Requests New Sites and Announcements
General Catalog of Old Books and Authors
http://www.kingkong.demon.co.uk/ngcoba/ngcoba.htm
which now indexes 24,000 books available free online, including all
PG(US) & PG(Aus)'s books, along with some basic date information
about them and their authors where you can find more.
For information please contact Philip Harper
<webmaster AT kingkong.demon.co.uk>
*
We have been invited to peruse the various eBook collections
of the Internet Archive for potential Project Gutenberg eBooks.
http://www.archive.org
Don't worry, many of the numbers listed are out of date,
but you should get all the files when you pass through
to the original sites.
Click on "texts" to get started, feel free to pick up any
of the eBooks you would like to work on.
Many Thanks To Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archive!
*
Please visit and test our newest site:
"PROJECT GUTENBERG EUROPE"
http://pge.rastko.net [Project Gutenberg Europe]
http://dp.rastko.net [Distributed Proofreaders Europe]
*
There is an experimental online reader available.
Start from any bibliographic record page, e.g.
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/4300
Basically this paginates the .txt file and remembers your last position
in a cookie so you can later resume reading where you left off.
Please test it. It should work with any book that has a text file
where the encoding is known.
*
MACHINE TRANSLATION
We are seeking as much information as possible on the various
approaches to Machine Translation. Any brand names or contact
information would be greatly appreciated.
***
Please use our new site for downloading DVD and CD images, etc.
http://www.gutenberg.org/cdproject
and
The PG bittorrent tracker is up and running.
Aaron Cannon has placed the CD and DVD there if anyone wants to test.
You can access it by visiting
http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu:6969
***
Please checkout the various Project Gutenberg FAQs, etc. at:
http://www.gutenberg.org/about
*
We're building a team to read our eBooks into MP3 files
for the visually impaired and other audio book users.
Let us know if you'd like to join this group.
More information at http://www.gutenberg.org/audio
***
Project Gutenberg Needs DVD Burners
So far we have sent out 15 million eBooks via snailmail!!!
We currently have access to a dozen DVD burners. If you have a DVD burner
and are interested in lending a hand, please email Aaron Cannon
<cannona at fireantproductions.com>
We can set you up with images, or snail you these DVDs
for you to copy. You can either snail them directly
to readers whose addresses we can send you, or you can
do a stack of these and send the whole box back for reshipping.
We can also reimburse you for supplies and postage if you wish.
Please note that we can only use DVDs which are burnt in the dvd-r format,
as we have had some compatibility issues with the dvd+r format.
***
Project Gutenberg is seeking graphics we can use for our Web
pages and publicity materials. If you have original graphics
depicting Project Gutenberg themes, please contribute them!
To see some of what we have now, please see:
ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/images
*** PROJECT GUTENBERG IS SEEKING LEGAL BEAGLES
Project Gutenberg is seeking (volunteer) lawyers.
We have regular need for intellectual property legal advice
(both US and international) and other areas. Please email
Project Gutenberg's CEO, Greg Newby <gbnewby AT pglaf.org> ,
if you can help.
This is much more important than many of us realize!
***Progress Report, including Distributed Proofreaders
In the first 03.00 months of this year, we produced 901 new eBooks.
It took us from July 1971 to May 1997 to produce our first 901 eBooks!
That's 13 WEEKS as Compared to ~26 Years!!!
53 New eBooks This Week
38 New eBooks Last Week
265 New eBooks This Month [Mar]
300 Average Per Month in 2006
266 Average Per Month in 2005 Counting 216 PGEu
248 Average Per Month in 2005 Not Counting PGEu
336 Average Per Month in 2004
355 Average Per Month in 2003
203 Average Per Month in 2002
103 Average Per Month in 2001
901 New eBooks in 2006
3186 New eBooks in 2005 Counting 216 PGeu
> 2970 New eBooks in 2005 Not Counting PGEu
4049 New eBooks in 2004
4164 New eBooks in 2003
2441 New eBooks in 2002
1240 New eBooks in 2001
====
15,981 New eBooks Since Start Of 2001
That's Only 63.00 Months!
~254 books per month!
19,046 Total Project Gutenberg eBooks
15,946 eBooks This Week Last Year
====
3,100 New eBooks In Last 12 Months
[Incl. PGAu PGEu & PrePrints]
555 eBooks From Project Gutenberg of Australia
[This does NOT include PGAu eBooks posted
at the U.S. site: www.gutenberg.org ]
286 eBooks From Project Gutenberg of Europe
141 Entry From Project Gutenberg PrePrints
You may also want to look at Project Runeberg [Scandinavian]
http://runeberg.org
*
Project Gutenberg began operation on July 4, 1971
Project Runeberg began operation on December 13, 1992
Distributed Proofreaders began October 22, 2000
[Became an official PG-US site in 2002]
Project Gutenberg of Australia began in August, 2001
The Project Gutenberg Consortia Center started in 1997]
[Became an official PG-US site in 2003]
Project Gutenberg of Europe started January 12, 2004
[Posted first books February 26, when we met in Brussels
to address people at the European Union Parliament.
Project Gutenberg PrePrints Started January 25, 2006
http://preprints.pglaf.org/ old
http://preprints.readingroo.ms/ new
*
PROJECT GUTENBERG DISTRIBUTED PROOFREADERS UPDATE:
Since starting production in October 2000,
Distributed Proofreaders has contributed
8,265 Books to Project Gutenberg.
36 added this week.
For more complete DP statistics, visit:
http://www.pgdp.net/c/stats/stats_central.php
*
Check out our website at www.gutenberg.org, and see below to learn how
you can get INSTANT access to our eBooks via FTP servers even before
the new eBooks listed below appear in our catalog.
eBooks are posted throughout the week. You can even get daily lists.
Info on subscribing to daily, weekly, monthly Newsletters, listservs:
http://www.gutenberg.org/howto/subscribe-howto
or
http://www.gutenberg.org/subs.shtml
***
*Project Gutenberg Consortia Center Report
I haven't had time to incorporate the new additions,
as the Consortia Center recently doubled in size, for
a current total of ~75,000 eBooks at http://gutenberg.cc
Please note the addition of the Internet Archive
marked with <<< below.
PGCC's current eBook and eDocument Collections listings
of 18 collections. . .with this week's listing as:
Alex-Wire Tap Collection, 2,036 HTML eBook Files
Black Mask Collection, 12,000 HTML eBook Files
The Coradella Bookshelf Collection, 141 eBook Files
DjVu Collection, 272 PDF and DJVU eBook Files
eBooks at Adelaide Collection, 27,709 eBook Files
Himalayan Academy, 3,400 HTML eBook Files
Internet Archive ~30,000 eBook Files [In Progress] <<<
Literal Systems Collection, 68 MP3 eBook Files
Logos Group Collection, ~34,000 TXT eBook Files
Poet's Corner Poetry Collection, 6,700 Poetry Files
Project Gutenberg Collection, 15,035 eBook Files
PGCC Chinese eBook Collection ~300 eBook files <<< Note Name Change
Renaisscance Editions Collection, 561 HTML eBook Files
Swami Center Collection, 78 HTML eBook Files
Tony Kline Collection, 223 HTML eBook Files
Widger Library, 2,600 HTML eBook Files
CIA's Electronic Reading Room, 2,019 Reference Files
=======Grand Total Files=========~137,142 Total Files=====
Average Size of the Collections 8,067.18 Total Files
These eBooks are catalogued as per the instructions of
their donors: some are one file per book; some have a
file for each chapter; and some even have a file for a
single page or poem. . .or are overcounted for reasons
I have not mentioned. . .each of which could cause the
overcounting or duplication of numbers.
If we presume 2 out of 3 of these files are overcounts,
that leaves a unique book total of
~45,714 Unique eBooks
If we presume 3 out of 4 of these files are overcounts,
that leaves a unique book total of
~34,286 Unique eBooks
[The new total of ~75,000 eBooks has eliminated many of
the necessities for calculating unique eBooks this way]
***
Please also note that over 25,000 eBooks are listed via
The Online Books Page, of which over 5,700 are from PG.
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/
In addition: The Internet Public Library had a similar
listing which is now in limbo. If anyone knows what is
happening with the IPL, please let us know. Inquiries,
made months ago, and again recently, have not turned up
any current information.
You can try a new IPL service at:
http://www.ipl.org/div/subject/browse/hum60.60.00/
It would appear that The Internet Public Library ended
its first incarnation with about 22,284 entries, which
has now been surpassed by the Online Books Page.
Still looking for more Internet Public Library info.
***
Today Is Day #091 of 2006
This Completes Week #13 and Month #03.00 [364 days this year]
274 Days/39 Weeks To Go [We get 52 Wednesdays this year]
954 Books To Go To #20,000
[Our production year begins/ends
1st Wednesday of the month/year]
69 Weekly Average in 2006
61 Weekly Average in 2005 [Counting 216 PGEu]
57 Weekly Average in 2005 [Not Counting PGEu]
78 Weekly Average in 2004
79 Weekly Average in 2003
47 Weekly Average in 2002
24 Weekly Average in 2001
45 Only ~45 Numbers Left On Our Reserved Numbers List
[Used to be well over 100]
[This listing usually from the previous week]
*** Permanent Requests For Assistance:
DISTRIBUTED PROOFREADERS NEEDS CONTENT, PROOFERS AND SCANNER TYPES
Please visit the site:
http://www.pgdp.net
for more information about how you can help a lot by
simply proofreading just a few pages per day, or more.
If you have a book that has been scanned, but not yet run
through OCR (optical character recognition) or proofed,
and you would like the Distributed Proofreaders to work on it,
please email dphelp at pgdp.net and we will get things started.
Also, DP is seeking public domain books not already in the
Project Gutenberg collection. To see what is already online,
visit http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg/GUTINDEX.ALL (a text file)
listing Project Gutenberg eBooks and is available for downloading.
Do you have Public Domain books you would like to see in the archive?
Can they be destructively scanned? If so send them to the Distributed
Proofreading Team! Please email dphelp at pgdp.net with your geographic
location. You will be given the address of the nearest high-speed scanner.
[Note that the high-speed scanner requires destruction of the book(s) which
will not be returned.] We have high-speed scanners currently located in
the east, west and central portions of the US to make shipping easier.
Please make sure that any books you send are _not_ already in the archive
and please check them against David's "In Progress" list at:
http://www.dprice48.freeserve.co.uk/GutIP.html
to ensure no one is currently working on them. It would also be helpful if
you obtain copyright clearance before mailing the books, and send the 'OK'
lines to
dphelp at pgdp.net
Do you like to work on an entire book at once but don't have the time
or technology to do the scanning, OCR, and initial proofing yourself?
Distributed Proofreaders has the perfect solution! Just send us email
telling us that you are interested in post-processing and we will help
find a project you would like to work on.
Please contact us at:
dphelp at pgdp.net
if you would like to know more about the Distributed Proofreaders.
***Donation Information
We Have Included Quick and Easy Ways to Donate. . .As Per Your Requests!
We Are Looking For Volunteers To Add eBooks In More Languages,
as well as in more formats, including music, artwork, movies, etc.
***
QUICK WAYS TO MAKE A DONATION TO PROJECT GUTENBERG
A. Send a check or money order to:
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
809 North 1500 West
Salt Lake City, UT 84116
USA
B. Donate by credit card online:
NetworkForGood:
http://www.guidestar.org/partners/networkforgood/donate.jsp?ein=64-6221541
or
PayPal to "donate at gutenberg.org":
http://www.paypal.com
/xclick/business=donate%40gutenberg.org&item_name=Donate+to+Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg's success is due to the hard work of thousands of
volunteers over more than 34 years. Your donations make it possible
to support these volunteers, and pay our few employees to continue the
creation of free electronic texts. We accept credit cards, checks and
transfers from any country, in any currency.
Donations are made to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
(PGLAF). PGLAF is approved as a charitable 501(c)(3) organization by
the US Internal Revenue Service, and has the Federal Employee Information
Number (EIN) 64-6221541.
For more information, including several other ways to donate, go to
http://www.gutenberg.org/donation.html or email donate at gutenberg.org
*Access To The Project Gutenberg Collections
*Mirror Site Information
Mirrors (copies) of the complete collection are available around the world.
To find the sites nearest you, go to:
http://www.gutenberg.org/MIRRORS.ALL
*Instant Access To Our Latest eBooks
http://www.gutenberg.org/find
allows searching by title, author, language and subject.
Use your Web browser or FTP program to visit our master download
site (or a mirror) if you know the file's name you want. Try:
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs
or
ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/
and then navigate to the appropriate directory and look for the first
five characters of the file's name. Note that updated eBooks usually
go in their original directory (e.g., etext99, etext00, etc.)
***
Statistical Review
In the 13 weeks of this year, we have produced ~901 new eBooks.
It took us from 07/71 to 05/96 to produce our FIRST 901 eBooks!!!
That's 13 WEEKS as Compared to ~26 YEARS!!!
FLASHBACK!
Here's a sample of what books we were doing around eBook #901
Mon Year Title and Author [filename.ext] ###
A "C" Following The eText # Indicates That This eText Is Under Copyright
[Note: books without month and year entries are now in new catalog format]
Jun 1997 Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe [#1][usherxxx.xxx] 932
Jun 1997 The Bab Ballads, by W. S. Gilbert [Gilbert #3] [2babbxxx.xxx] 931
Jun 1997 The Cook's Decameron, by Mrs. W. G. Water [ckdecxxx.xxx] 930
Jun 1997 The Cyberpunk Fakebook, by St. Jude & R.U. Sirius [fakebxxx.xxx] 929C
May 1997 Alice In Wonderland, HTML Version of 30th Edition [alicexxh.xxx] 928
May 1997 The Lamplighter, by Charles Dickens [Dickens #29] [lmpltxxx.xxx] 927
May 1997 10,000 Dreams Interpreted, Gustavus Hindman Miller[drmntxxx.xxx] 926
May 1997 United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches [uspisxxx.xxx] 925
May 1997 To Be Read At Dusk, by Charles Dickens[Dickens#28][rddskxxx.xxx] 924
May 1997 Life of Francis Marion #3, by William Dobein James[jjmarxxx.xxx] 923
May 1997 Sunday Under Three Heads by Charles Dickens[CD#27][suthsxxx.xxx] 922
May 1997 De Profundis, by Oscar Wilde [Oscar Wilde #13] [dprofxxx.xxx] 921
May 1997 Ethics, by Benedict de Spinoza/Elwes Part 2 [#2] [2spnexxx.xxx] 920
May 1997 Ethics, by Benedict de Spinoza/Elwes Part 1 [#1] [1spnexxx.xxx] 919
May 1997 Sketches of Young Gentlemen, by Dickens [CD #26] [skygmxxx.xxx] 918
May 1997 Barnaby Rudge, 80's Riots, by Charles Dickens[#25][rudgexxx.xxx] 917
May 1997 Sketches of Young Couples, by Charles Dickens[#24][yngcpxxx.xxx] 916
May 1997 Library Work with Children, by Alice I. Hazeltine [lwwchxxx.xxx] 915
May 1997 The Uncommercial Traveller by Charles Dickens[#23][unctrxxx.xxx] 914
May 1997 A Hero of Our Time, by M. Y. Lermontov [aheroxxx.xxx] 913
May 1997 Mudfog and Other Sketches, by Charles Dickens[#22][mdfogxxx.xxx] 912
May 1997 Tales of the Fish Patrol, by Jack London[London#8][totfpxxx.xxx] 911
White Fang, by Jack London 910
The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boone, by John Filson 909
A Treatise on Parents and Children, by George Bernard Shaw 908
May 1997 Flying Machine, by W.J. Jackman & Thos. H. Russell[flymcxxx.xxx] 907
May 1997 Abraham Lincoln, by James Russell Lowell[Lowell#2][1lncnxxx.xxx] 906
May 1997 Within the Law, by Marvin Dana from Bayard Veiller[wnlawxxx.xxx] 905
May 1997 Her Father's Daughter, by Gene Stratton-Porter[#7][hfdtrxxx.xxx] 904
May 1997 The White Company, by Arthur Conan Doyle[Doyle#12][whtcoxxx.xxx] 903
May 1997 The Happy Prince & Other Tales by Oscar Wilde[#12][hpaotxxx.xxx] 902
May 1997 The Jew of Malta, by Christopher Marlowe [CM #3] [jmltaxxx.xxx] 901
May 1997 Decline/Fall Of The Roman Empire, by Gibbon, Folio[dfre310f.xxx] 900
(NOTE: in proprietary Folio .nfo format; Vol. 3 only.)
(See also: #890-895 for HTML format, #731-736 for plain text.)
*
Have We Given Away A Trillion Books/Dollars Yet?
If our average eBook has reached just 1% of the world population of
6,507,879,958 that would be 19,046 x 65,078,800 = ~1.24 Trillion !!!
With 19,046 eBooks online as of April 05, 2006 it now takes an average
of ~1% of the world gaining a nominal value of ~$.81 from each book.
[1% world population x #eBooks] 65,078,800 x 19,046 x $.81 = ~$1 Trillion
[Google "world population" "popclock" to get the most current figures.]
6,507,879,958
65,078,800
*
A Trillion Dollars Given Away At Just $.53 Value Per Book To 100 Million
With 19,046 eBooks online as of April 05, 2006 it now takes an average
of 100,000,000 readers gaining a nominal value of $0.53 from each book.
This "cost" is down from about $.63 when we had 15,946 eBooks a year ago.
Our Target Audience Is 1.5% Of The World Population = ~100,000,000 people.
At 19,046 eBooks in 34 Years and 09.00 Months We Averaged
548 Per Year
45.7 Per Month
1.50 Per Day
At 901 eBooks Done In The 090 Days Of 2006 We Averaged
10.0 Per Day
69 Per Week
300 Per Month
If you are interested in the population of the world or of the U.S.
you might want to know that these numbers, official as they appear,
are just just estimates, and perhaps not as accurate as we hope.
However, for those keeping track of how quickly the U.S. reaches a
300 million population level, and who noticed the passing of 298M,
just two weeks ago. . .the U.S. is already 1/6 the way to 299M, so
it will probably be 10 more weeks to 299M and 22 more to 300M.
Recently the U.S. Congress, pertaining to district reapportionment,
who gets to vote for which Congresspeople, decided that many of the
districts were undercounted by 5%, perhaps then later deciding that
all districts had been undercounted by 5% [can't recall details].
*
The production statistics are calculated based on full weeks'
production; each production-week starts/ends Wednesday noon,
starts with the first Wednesday of January. January 4th was
the first Wednesday of 2006, and thus ended PG's production
year of 2005 and began the production year of 2006 at noon.
This year there will be 52 Wednesdays, thus no extra week.
*
Odd Statistic
Today at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00
. . .the time and date will be 01:02:03 04/05/06.
*
By the way, for those interested, the official U.S. population
estimates just passed 298 million, though many say estimations
of this nature leave out as much as 5% of the population.
Still hoping for more statistical updates and additional entries.
[This one is getting a little out of date, as the US population
is obviously no longer 6% of the world. In fact, rounding to the
nearest percent, the US will soon fall from 5% to 4%.]
"If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely
100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same,
it would look something like the following. There would be:
57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both North and South America
8 Africans
52 would be female
48 would be male
70 would be non-white
30 would be white
70 would be non-Christian
30 would be Christian
6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth
and all 6 would be from the United States
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth
1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education
1 would own a computer [I think this is now much greater]
1 would be 79 years old or more.
Of those born today, the life expectancy is only 63 years,
but no country any longer issues copyrights that are sure
to expire within that 63 year period.
I would like to bring some of these figures more up to date,
as obviously if only 1% of 6 billion people owned a computer
then there would be only 60 million people in the world who
owned a computer, yet we hear that 3/4 + of the United States
households have computers, out of over 100 million households.
Thus obviously that is over 1% of the world population, just in
the United States.
I just called our local reference librarian and got the number
of US households from the 2004-5 U.S. Statistical Abstract at:
111,278,000 as per data from 2003 U.S Census Bureau reports.
If we presume the saturation level of U.S. computer households
is now around 6/7, or 86%, that is a total of 95.4 million,
and that's counting just one computer per household, and not
counting households with more than one, schools, businesses, etc.
I also found some figures that might challenge the literacy rate
given above, and would like some help researching these and other
such figures, if anyone is interested.
BTW, while I was doing this research, I came across a statistic
that said only 10% of the world's population is 60+ years old.
This means that basically 90% of the world's population would
never benefit from Social Security, even if the wealthy nations
offered it to them free of charge. Then I realized that the US
population has the same kind of age disparity, in which the rich
live so much longer than the poor, the whites live so much longer
than the non-whites. Thus Social Security is paid by all, but is
distributed more to the upper class whites, not just because they
can receive more per year, but because they will live more years
to receive Social Security. The average poor non-white may never
receive a dime of Social Security, no matter how much they pay in.
*
*Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists
For more information about the Project Gutenberg's mailing lists,
including the Project Gutenberg Weekly and Monthly Newsletters:
and the other Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists:
The weekly is sent on Wednesdays, and the monthly is sent on the
first Wednesday of the month.
To subscribe to any (or to unsubscribe or adjust your subscription
preferences), visit the Project Gutenberg mailing list server:
http://lists.pglaf.org
If you are having trouble with your subscription, please
email the list's human administrators at: help at pglaf.org
More information about the gweekly
mailing list