Remember Project Gutenberg is becoming international. Its main office is in the United States, but Project Gutenberg Australia and Projekt Gutenberg-DE (Germany) have been going for a long time. Project Gutenberg Europe will be European, with a staff in Belgrade and links between the different projects. I think it’s interesting to build a French-language online library working with other groups. It’s preparing for the future, when machine translation will be 99% satisfactory (things are progressing well on that front, though there’s a lot still to do). In about 10 years, everyone will be able to call up literary classics in a choice of about 100 languages. Let’s work together instead of separately, since for once it’s possible. Let’s also remember that everyone working with Project Gutenberg is a volunteer, including founder Michael Hart. The goal is to ensure its future independence of loans and other funding and of fleeting political and cultural priorities, to avoid any pressure from politicians or economic interests. The aim is also to ensure respect for the volunteers, who can be confident their work will be used for many years, even generations. Donations are used only to buy equipment and supplies, mostly computers and scanners. And then let’s remember that all the books scanned in are proofread twice, by two different people, to make sure they are 99.9% accurate. Software on the website (which is still being tested) allows users to convert books in ASCII, ISO-8859, Unicode and Big-5, for example, into other formats. Conversion will eventually be possible into still more formats, including Braille and voice. So there’s no point arguing about which format is best. Text format can either be used as is or to create others. Text-format books can also be easily used by those who want to offer them in more sophisticated formats, without any restriction except for respect for copyright laws in the country involved and the availability of new free versions produced. Some readers have asked about how volunteer proofreaders work. You go to the Distributed Proofreaders Europe website that has just been put up (and is still being tested) by Project Rastko (Belgrade) to handle the shared proofreading done by Project Gutenberg Europe. Sign up and you’ll then see detailed instructions (which are still being translated in several languages). For example, passages in bold, italic or underlined, like footnotes, are always treated the same way, to standardize presentation of all the e-books. A discussion forum allows you to ask questions or seek help at any time.