[gmonthly] Project Gutenberg Newsletter, Yearly Report

Michael S. Hart hart at pglaf.org
Fri Jan 21 08:37:16 PST 2011



Project Gutenberg Ends One Year And Starts Another


Here are our totals for 2010

34,759  Up 3,998  From  30,761  PG General Automated Count
 1,915  Up   185  From   1,830  Project Gutenberg of Australia
   750* Up    75* From     675* Project Gutenberg of Europe *Not totaled
   692  Up   224  From     468  Project Gutenberg of Canada [Estimated]
 2,009  Up     1  From   2,008  PrePrints
======   ======
39,375  Up 4,408  From  35,067  Grand Total [Counting some subtractions]



 12.077 eBooks Per Day
 84.969 eBooks Per Week
367.333 eBooks Per Month



My apologies for not getting this out earlier, I was on the road.


Noon, January 6, 2011, is the end of our calendar production year
number 40 and the beginning of our 41st year, though our 40 years
of calendar time won't be complete until July 5, 2011.  This date
is due to our previous calendar being a weekly one running from a
Wednesday noon to the next Wednesday noon.  Once someone else has
taken over the Newsletters, they are welcome to change this to an
alternate date such as midnight January 1, but I was always awake
and working at noon, and able to send out weekly newsletters so I
just did what worked on that schedule.


HEADLINE NEWS
>>>

39,375 is our current total for internally manufactured eBooks:
4,408 more than last year's 35,067 final grand total!

If we continue to average about 12 per day it should take perhaps
another 50 days or 7 weeks to get to #40,000, which should be in
the days when Winter is turning to to Spring.

This means we should be ahead of 40,000 eBooks in 40 years.

Who would have thought when we had created and posted:

1 eBook in 1971
10 eBooks in 1990
100 eBooks in 1993
1,000 eBooks in 1997
10,000 eBooks in 2003

we would have created and posted 40,000 eBooks by early in 2011?

and 100,000 counting those donated by other eLibraries?



Hot Requests


We need lawyers in the following fields:


Probate

Contract

Copyright


We also need people who can help make our web pages better for an
ever increasing number of people surfing in on cellphones, and in
different languages.  We will give you all you need to design and
implement your own Project Gutenberg web pages.  Who knows, it is
possible you could start a whole famous web page design career.

Public Domain Day

The first day of each year is Public Domain Day, when we list the
works that would have gone into the public domain that day if not
for the most recent two copyright extensions [but don't forget we
have had more extensions from the original 14 years].



PUBLIC DOMAIN DAY IS NOW CELEBRATED EVERT JANUARY 1


Every new year since the first copyrights expired, back
around 1724, the world has looked forward to expiration
of copyrights and the public domain availability of the
works that have been kept under publishing monopolies.

This coming January 1 Europeans will see a nice list of
great works entering the public domain as the copyright
terms expire, some listed below, but the United States,
where their landmark Supreme Court Case decided that an
extended copyright term could last literally forever, a
person can no longer look forward to such happenings.

In Europe this year some exampes of copyright expiring:

Freud
Havelock Ellis
Zane Grey
William Butler Yeats
etc.

These works will now be available for new life breathed
into them via any number of unauthorized new editions a
host of publishers and private citizens can now create,
including new articles, books, TV shows, videos, movies
and all other forms of media.

Next year many people will ask why the sudden resurgent
interest in Freud, Ellis, Grey, Yeats, etc. and answers
will rarely include the fact that these authors weren't
available for such endeavors before due to copyright.

The media rarely refers to copyright expirations as the
media feels they are dependent are extended copyrights,
though it is hard to really expect that even the modern
Oprah shows of this, her last season, will be of a huge
interest when or if the copyright expires in 2105.

If you are interested in more information search engine
efforts should net you any number of sites via a simple
"public domain day" search.

You will find lists of items entering the public domain
under various copyright terms in other countries, and a
different set of lists of WOULD HAVE BEEN in the U.S.:

Waton and Crick's original Nature article on DNA
Walt Disney's original movie of Peter Pan
The first James Bond adventure:  Casino Royale
The first issue of Playboy magazine
Major works by:
Ray Bradbury [Fahrenheit 451]
J.D. Salinger [Nine Stories]
Agatha Christie [A Pocket Full of Rye]
C.S. Lewis [The Silver Chair, #4 in the Narnia series]
James Baldwin [Go Tell It On The Mountain]
Leon Uris [Battle Cry]
not to mention great science fiction works by:
Robert Anson Heinlein
Isaac Asimov
Arthur C. Clarke

In addition all of the first HUGO AWARD winners must be
considered, even though most or all of them were out in
the year or two before the awards were given in 1953.

WARNING:  Any number of institutions appear to have the
idea they can take credit for Public Domain Day," and I
would be somewhat suspect of those claims, as copyright
expirations have been taking place on January 1 a long,
long, long time before anyone started celebrating it.


However, one point most of the are making that is worth
the time to pursue is that the public has less and less
in the way of public domain rights, and not just in the
way of extensions that make them last longer than a new
modern day lifetime, but also in those rarely mentioned
new forms of copyright of items that did not used to be
in any manner copyrightable, such as sports box scores.
Now, in my estimation, there isn't any new intellectual
input required to write box scores, any more than to do
the making of a telephone book, which has been ruled as
not copyrightable, so obviously things are changing now
even more than they already have, to the point where it
appears nearly everything will be copyrightable.



Notable items that would have been public domain a year ago:

Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury. . .How True. . .How True!!!
Walt Disney's Peter Pan. . .Is Copyright The New Captain Hook?
The First James Bond Book, Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming
Early books by Saul Bellow, Arthur Miller, Leon Uris, Jas Baldwin
Watson and Crick's Original "Nature" Article on DNA
C.S. Lewis' The Silver Chair
Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March.
Salinger's Nine Stories
>From Here To Eternity
Asimov's Second Foundation
Early works of Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, E.E. Smith, van Vogt
War of the Worlds
Julius Caesar movie [James Mason, Marlon Brando, etc.]

Before these last two major copyright extensions renewals were of
legal necessity to double the length of copyright terms, and most
works were never renewed; ONLY 15% of all copyrights, 8% of books
were ever renewed:  meaning the vast majority of everything under
copyright before 1982 would be in the public domain.


Read more about this at:

http://www.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/pre1976

and related web pages.


These are great articles by a great copyright lawyer.




Milestones Of The Year


In 2010 we saw our 39,000th internally produced eBook go out, and
our 29,000th in English, our 1,700th in French, 700th in German--
and our next eBook in Spanish will be #300; we also saw Dutch and
Portuguese pass 500 eBooks and Greek has moved from less than 100
to 112 just in the last handful of week.

We still need to find ways to do more in Spanish and Portuguese.


These 39,000+ eBooks representing over 50 languages are at:

http://www.gutenberg.org



75,000+ Donated eBooks representing over 100 languages are at:

http://www.gutenberg.cc




100,000 Total Titles


In toto, counting the eBooks donated to us from other eLibraries,
individuals and schools at http://www.gutenberg.cc we now have in
well excess of 100,000 titles, though it is probably closer to an
even 100,000, given various duplications, etc.



Production Year Statistics

The numbers presented below will approximate what are recorded as
of noon on January 6, and the production year will be recorded as
running last year from Wednesday, January 7, 2009 through January
6, 2010, and the coming year will end on January 5, 2011.

Thus we had 52 Wednesdays this past year for 364 days; every once
in a while we get 53 production weeks on this calendar, which has
to be one reason for eventually changing it.



Here is how we ended 2010

      day       | cnt
----------------+-----
 Wed 2010-12-29 |   6
 Thu 2010-12-30 |  13
 Fri 2010-12-31 |   8
 Sat 2011-01-01 |  10
 Sun 2011-01-02 |  12
 Mon 2011-01-03 |  14
 Tue 2011-01-04 |   8

Weekly Total       73


Here is how we ended 2009


      day       | cnt
----------------+-----
 Wed 2009-12-30 |   9
 Thu 2009-12-31 |  12
 Fri 2010-01-01 |   6
 Sat 2010-01-02 |  10
 Sun 2010-01-03 |   2
 Mon 2010-01-04 |  21
 Tue 2010-01-05 |   5

Weekly Total       65




Here are our totals for 2010

Grand total for today: 34759

     1  29158   English en
     2  1715    French  fr
     3  730     German  de
     4  559     Finnish fi
     5  509     Dutch   nl
     6  500     Portuguese      pt
     7  405     Chinese zh
     8  299     Spanish es
     9  264     Italian it
    10  114     Greek   el
    11  75      Latin   la
    12  71      Esperanto       eo
    13  68      Swedish sv
    14  54      Tagalog tl
    15  33      Danish  da
    16  28      Polish  pl
    17  27      Catalan ca
    18  20      Hungarian       hu
    19  15      Norwegian       no
    20  12      Japanese        ja



Here are our totals for 2010

34,759  Up 3,998  From  30,761  PG General Automated Count
 1,915  Up   185  From   1,830  Project Gutenberg of Australia
   750* Up    75* From     675* Project Gutenberg of Europe *Not totaled
   692  Up   224  From     468  Project Gutenberg of Canada [Estimated]
 2,009  Up     1  From   2,008  PrePrints
======   ======
39,375  Up 4,408  From  35,742  Grand Total [Counting some subtractions]
                        35,067  *Subtracting Europe From 2009
<<<<


 12.077 eBooks Per Day
 84.969 eBooks Per Week
367.333 eBooks Per Month




Here is how we ended 2009


Grand total for today: 30761  from automated in house counter

25866   English en
1531    French  fr
625     German  de
517     Finnish fi
455     Dutch   nl
405     Chinese zh
384     Portuguese      pt
270     Spanish es
225 <<<<<




Here are our totals for 2009

30,761  Up 3,145  From  27,616  PG General Automated Count
 1,830  Up   104  From   1,726  Project Gutenberg of Australia
   675  Up   121  From     554  Project Gutenberg of Europe
   468  Up   243  From     225  Project Gutenberg of Canada [Estimated]
 2,008  DN   423  From   2,431   PrePrints [Subtracted 307 Chinese eBooks]
======   ======
35,742  Up 3,190  From  32,552   Grand Total [Counting subtractions]

<<<<


  9.825 eBooks Per Day
 68.773 eBooks Per Week
297.850 eBooks Per Month


///



Here is how we ended 2008



27,616   PG General Automated Count
 1,726   Project Gutenberg of Australia
   554   Project Gutenberg of Europe
   225   Project Gutenberg of Canada [Estimated]
         [202 up to December, no current report]
 2,431   PrePrints [Counting the 307 Chinese eBooks +111]
======   ======
32,552   Grand Total [Counting those PrePrints]




Here is how we ended 2007

The combined PG projects had produced a total of 26,161 titles.


The most number of books posted...
 ...in one day was 65 on the 26th December
 ...in one week was 151 in Week 18 (week ending 9th May)
 ...in one month was 477 in November

We averaged
338 per month [Over 4,000 for the year]
 78 per week
 11.13 per day



Production Year Statistics From Last Year

The numbers presented below will approximate what are recorded as
of noon on January 6, and the production year will be recorded as
running last year from Wednesday, January 7, 2009 through January
6, 2010, and the coming year will end on January 5, 2011.

Thus we had 52 Wednesdays this past year for 364 days; every once
in a while we get 53 production weeks on this calendar, which has
to be one reason for eventually changing it.



Here is how we ended 2009


      day       | cnt
----------------+-----
 Wed 2009-12-30 |   9
 Thu 2009-12-31 |  12
 Fri 2010-01-01 |   6
 Sat 2010-01-02 |  10
 Sun 2010-01-03 |   2
 Mon 2010-01-04 |  21
 Tue 2010-01-05 |   5

Weekly Total       65



Grand total for today: 30761  from automated in house counter

25866   English en
1531    French  fr
625     German  de
517     Finnish fi
455     Dutch   nl
405     Chinese zh
384     Portuguese      pt
270     Spanish es
225     Italian it
etc.



30,761  Up 3,145  From  27,616  PG General Automated Count
 1,830  Up   104  From   1,726  Project Gutenberg of Australia
   675  Up   121  From     554  Project Gutenberg of Europe
   468  Up   243  From     225  Project Gutenberg of Canada [Estimated]
 2,008  DN   423  From   2,431   PrePrints [Subtracted 307 Chinese eBooks]
======   ======
35,742  Up 3,190  From  32,552   Grand Total [Counting subtractions]


  9.825 eBooks Per Day
 68.773 eBooks Per Week
297.850 eBooks Per Month


///



Here is how we ended 2008



27,616   PG General Automated Count
 1,726   Project Gutenberg of Australia
   554   Project Gutenberg of Europe
   225   Project Gutenberg of Canada [Estimated]
         [202 up to December, no current report]
 2,431   PrePrints [Counting the 307 Chinese eBooks +111]
======   ======
32,552   Grand Total [Counting those PrePrints]




Here is how we ended 2007

The combined PG projects had produced a total of 26,161 titles.


The most number of books posted...
 ...in one day was 65 on the 26th December
 ...in one week was 151 in Week 18 (week ending 9th May)
 ...in one month was 477 in November

We averaged
338 per month [Over 4,000 for the year]
 78 per week
 11.13 per day

99 titles were newly REposted to the new filing system, bringing us almost to
the 2,000 mark.


Here is a small selection of project milestones;

TOTAL Original Project Gutenberg eBooks equals about
the number of books in the average U.S. public library
  32,500 on 20082121 [Counting the 307 Chinese Preprints]
                     [And presuming 3 after official count]
  32,000 ~~ Rechecking Date
  31,500 on 20081021 [not an error, 1,777 PrePrints]
  30,000 on 20081021
  29,500 on 20080919
  29,000 ~~ Rechecking Date
  28,500 ~~ Rechecking Date
  28,000 ~~ 20080516
  27,500 on 20080405
  27,000 ~~ 20080229
  26,500 on 20080126
  26,000 on 20071224
  25,000 on 20071012
  24,000 on 20070710
  23,000 on 20070415

PG-AU
  1,700 on 20081010
  1,600 on 20080208
  1,500 on 20070407

PG Canada
  175 on 20080930
  100 on 20080325
  110 on 20080417




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