Produced by Al Haines PROJECT GUTENBERG (1971-2005) MARIE LEBERT NEF, University of Toronto, 2005 Copyright © 2005 Marie Lebert Dated August 15, 2005, this long article (following a short version published in June 2004 [and copied at the end of this file]) is a paper for the third International Colloquium on ICT-enhanced French Studies: Dialogues across languages and cultures, October 2005, York University, Toronto, Canada. This article is dedicated to all Project Gutenberg and Distributed Proofreaders volunteers on the five continents, who offer us a free library of 16,000 high-quality eBooks, mainly classics of world literature, with a goal of one million eBooks in ten years. With many thanks to Russon Wooldridge, who kindly edited this long article. The original version is available on the NEF, University of Toronto: http://www.etudes-francaises.net/dossiers/gutenberg_eng.htm The French version is: Le Projet Gutenberg (1971-2005). The updated English version is: Project Gutenberg (1971-2008). TABLE 1. Summary 2. History, From the Origins to Today 3. The Public Domain, an Endless Topic 4. The Method Adopted by Project Gutenberg 5. Distributed Proofreaders, to Handle Shared Proofreading 6. eBooks in More and More Languages 7. From the Past to the Future 8. Chronology [updated in 2006] 9. Links 10. Short Version [dated 2004] 1. SUMMARY My fascination for Project Gutenberg is not new, but it doesn't wane. Nobody has done a better job of putting the world's literature at everyone's disposal. And to create a vast network of volunteers all over the world, without wasting people's skills or energy. Here is the story in a few lines. In July 1971, Michael Hart created Project Gutenberg with the goal of making available for free, and electronically, literary works belonging to the public domain. A project that has long been considered by its critics as impossible on a large scale. A pioneer site in a number of ways, Project Gutenberg was the first information provider on the internet and is the oldest digital library. Michael himself keyed in the first hundred books. When the internet became popular, in the mid-1990s, the project got a boost and an international dimension. Michael still typed and scanned in books, but now coordinated the work of dozens and then hundreds of volunteers in many countries. The number of electronic books rose from 1,000 (in August 1997) to 2,000 (in May 1999), 3,000 (in December 2000) and 4,000 (in October 2001). 30 years after its birth, Project Gutenberg is running at full capacity. It had 5,000 books online in April 2002, 10,000 books online in October 2003, and 15,000 books online in January 2005, with 400 new books available per month, 40 mirror sites in a number of countries, and books downloaded by the tens of thousands every day.