The launching of Distributed Proofreaders Europe (DP Europe) by Project Rastko
was indeed a very important step. DP Europe uses the software of the original
Distributed Proofreaders and is dedicated to the proofreading of eBooks for
Project Gutenberg Europe. Since its very beginnings, DP Europe has been a
multilingual website, with its main pages translated into several European
languages by volunteer translators. In April 2004, DP Europe was available in 12
languages. The long-term goal is 60 languages and 60 linguistic teams
representing all the European languages. When it gets up to speed, DP Europe
will provide eBooks for several national and/or linguistic digital libraries,
for example Projet Gutenberg France for France. The goal is for every country to
have its own digital library (according to the country copyright limitations),
within a continental network (for France, the European network) and a global
network (for the whole planet).
A few lines now on Project Rastko, which had the boldness to launch such a
difficult and exciting project for Europe, and catalysed volunteers' energy in
both Eastern and Western Europe (and anywhere else: as the internet has no
boundaries, there is no need to live in Europe to register). Founded in 1997,
Project Rastko is a non-governmental cultural and educational project. One of
its goals is the online publishing of Serbian culture. It is part of the Balkans
Cultural Network Initiative, a regional cultural network for the Balkan
peninsula in south-eastern Europe.
In May 2005, Distributed Proofreaders Europe finished processing its 100th
eBook. In June 2005 Project Gutenberg Europe was launched with these first 100
eBooks. PG Europe operates under "life +50" copyright laws. On August 3, 2005,
137 books were complete (processed through the site and posted to Project
Gutenberg Europe), 418 books were in progress (processed through the site but
not yet posted, because currently going through their final proofreading and
assembly), and 125 books were being proofread (currently being processed). DP
Europe supports Unicode to be able to proofread eBooks in numerous languages.
Unicode is an encoding system created in 1991 that gives a unique number for
every character in any language.
From the Past to the Future
10 books online in August 1989; 100 books in January 1994; 1,000 books in August
1997; 2,000 books in May 1999; 3,000 books in December 2000; 4,000 books in
October 2001; 5,000 books in April 2002; 10,000 books in October 2003; 15,000
books in January 2005; and 1 million books planned for 2015.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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