Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter The Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter--Aug. 24, 2009 eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since 1971 40 Months to The End of the World Via Mayan Calendaring on December 21, 2012 [some now saying October 11, 2011] Leaving 3 years 4 months, 13 1/3 seasons or 40 months. Not to worry, I will still make long range predictions. Headline News We just released our 25,000th English Project Gutenberg eBook as "Merriam-Websters Unabridged Dictionary, 1913" For those of you unfamiliar with Merriam-Websters, this was the dictionary started by Noah Webster and model of all dictionaries bearing his name, though I should warn you that no official connection is required under law-- as he did not trademark his name. I am having a little trouble writing up press releases, and would appreciate any possible assistance as below: /// Massive Dictionary Is Gutenberg's 25,000th English eBook The 1913 Merriam-Webster's Unabridged Dictionary marks a watershed in both the eBook world and paper publication. This is one of the finest dictionaries of all time, with as much history in its previous editions as those from a later period that now includes nearly a whole century. This dictionary, one of the world's greatest, is free of all charges, new and improved, and in the public domain, just waiting for you to download and own your own copy. In paper, this is one of the massive dictionaries movies use when they want to impress people, weighing so much a stand is usually provided at libaries, etc. Literally a potential murder weapon beyond the mythical blunt object usually associated with movie whodunits. However, for those who understand this dictionary, it is a source of a major portion of their educaction enabling a reader to follow links from one definition to another, until one understands why the same symbol is used for an element: copper, a planet: Venus, and the symbol for a human female. . .and education in itself, from the later 1950 edition edition, but not from current editions that have been pared down to a more businesslike performance. All of these are available at: http://www.gutenberg.org The Details: This weekend Project Gutenberg posted its 25,000th home- grown eBook: home-grown means not including eBooks given by the various Project Gutenbergs that are springing up, including Australia [approaching 2,000], PG of Europe is approaching 650, PG of Canda is approching 500, and many more around the world. All in all, adding up all the Project Gutenberg sites in toto, not discount duplications, there are 100,000+ book titles, along with music, movies, audiobooks, etc. All in all the original Project Gutenberg has produced a total of 29,660 at the time of this release, meaning the their total in all 50+ languages they have produced will be turning 30,000 in about a month. This larger total includes nearly 1,500 books in French, about 600 in German, 500 in Finnish, over 400 in Dutch & Chinese, about 350 in Portuguese, and 250 in Spanish and the list goes on and on. If it is languages other than English that interest you: http://www.gutenberg.cc where there are over 100 languages represented in a wide variety of languages and subjects, with about 75,000 all total, approximately half of which are non-English. /// Our 30,000th eBook created under U.S. copyright law will come out a month or so from now, suggestions welcome for items in any language or medium. Thanks!!! Michael /// We Recently Published Our: 200th eBook in Italian 400th eBook in Chinese 500th eBook in Finnish We are coming up on our 250th in Spanish. . .suggestions??? We are coming up on our 600th in German. . .suggestions??? iPhone Acquisition As you know, we try to get one of each of the popular reading devices to test how our eBooks work on them and demonstrate a wide variety of reading options. A friend is updating his iPhone today and I am buying his old one, so we would appreciate any suggestions of which programs we should load to demonstrate the widest variety of readers. Our All Time Hottest Requests!!!!!!! FLASH RAM I am looking for the earliest flash RAM possible. The ideal piece around which to center this collection is one of the 8 megabyte USBs. The very earliest were PCMCIA cards, such as used for the Poqet computer, etc. The earliest USB flash drives were DisgoDizgo, M-Systems and these were OEMed by IBM, HP, etc. They are particular in a recognizable fashion because their snapon connectors resemble the connectors of jigsaw puzzles. We received two examples of RAM actually labeled "Flash," for the H-P 95 pocket DOS machine from 1991, and a sample of Fairchild bubble memory, as well, from down under. Thank you, Mate! POWERPOINT We need someone who can do PowerPoint illustrations. One in particular, building a 3-D box of 1,000 dominoes. Additional Newsletter Services In addition, we will provide the PG Canada Newsletter and totals from PG of Australia, Europe, PrePrints, etc. These totals do NOT include 75,000+ at httpwww.gutenberg.cc Where there are eBooks representing over 100 languages. As you may have noticed, I cheated by a few days on the date of this Newsletter so I could include #25,000 so I should warn you that the monthly totals will be larger, this month, and smaller next time. The Project Gutenberg Statistical Report [As of about noon Central Daylight Time] Various totals from the ~30,000 at httpwww.gutenberg.org and our other Project Gutenberg Sites This week: day | cnt ----------------+----- Mon 2009-08-17 | 12 Tue 2009-08-18 | 3 Wed 2009-08-19 | 13 Thu 2009-08-20 | 4 Fri 2009-08-21 | 8 Sat 2009-08-22 | 15 Sun 2009-08-23 | 10 ( Thanks to Marcello Perathoner! Here are the current language totals for languages with 200 or more eBooks. [Warning: this did not change overnight, so I am doubtful it is totally accurate.] Grand total for today: 29662 25002 English en 1454 French fr 597 German de 513 Finnish fi 441 Dutch nl 402 Chinese zh 344 Portuguese pt 253 Spanish es 203 Italian it Total increase +294 Last month +286 All Reported Languges Previous month +287 Not counting PrePrints, Canada, Australia, PG Europe Thanks to Greg Newby! ////// And From Project Gutenberg Sites Worldwide 29,662 up 294 PG General Automated Count 1,786 up 12 PG of Australia 644 up 3 PG of Europe 2,021 up 0 PG PrePrints, Reserved [42],etc. [PrePrints was down when I checked, sorry] 425 up 50 PG of Canada [Est. since End of June] [No additional news from PG of Canada] ====== 34,528 up 359 Grand Total Up from last month's 34,179 up 347 Grand Total Up from previous month's 33,832 up 320 Grand Total Note There are perhaps 100 eBooks not listed here that are already in circulation from Project Gutenberg. Note PG Canada includes English, French, and Italian. /// 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 on Calcuating 31,500 on 20081021 [not an error, 1,777 PrePrints] 30,000 on 20081021 29,500 on 20080919 29,000 ~~ Calculating 28,500 ~~ Calculating 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 /// Here is the July emergency Newsletter in toto for archiving. Extra Edition of the PG Newsletter I'm sending this out now because I have serious doubts as to whether I will be able to do this very easily when the Newsletter is actually due. This may be the last time on this hard drive that I actually get booted up, and it was pretty much just luck that got me this far. I'll be buying some new computers this week, I hope, with the hopes that I will be more or less back to normal, but right now the thing won't even let me make backups as the USB ports have power, but don't recognize any drives. I'm actually dialed up on the modem right now. If any of you have any suggestions as to the best deals I should be looking at for laptops and netbooks, please let me know, and please cc: gbnewby@pglaf.org The Brief News We are rapidly coming up to our 25,000th eBook in English and all suggestions for what title to use are welcome. This should take place next month. In addition, we are coming up on our 30,000th PG eBook of all languages perhaps a month or so after that, so we are also looking for a great eBook in another language to put up as #30,000. We are giving away about 75,000 books per day through the http://www.gutenberg org server, for ~2 million per month and the monthly total was often over 3 million per month, all told over the past 4 years or so. This means we have given away over 100 million books over the past 4 years, just through that one site alone. The World eBook Fair In addition, over these same four years we have sponsored The World eBook Fair along with The Internet Archive, The World Public Library, ebooksabouteverything.org, etc. http://www.worldebookfair.org handed out a million files, just on one day alone, July 4, to start up this 39th year of presenting eBooks on the Internet. Please note: this is less than a million eBooks, as some entries are multi-file in nature. Traffic has since dropped to about half that, with a very healthy 50,000 downloads per day of our "best sellers." In its first year The World eBook Fair gave away nearly a total of 30 million eBooks, and if the averages have been at 25 million over the 4 years, that's a 200 million book total over those two URLs over a 4 year period, or totals somewhere in that range. This does not count all the other sites such as Australia or Canada or PG of Europe, etc. The Current PG Totals I'm not sure I have time right now to fill in everything, with monthly comparisons as I usually do, as I am running mostly on adrenaline right now and will have to stop soon to eat, sleep, shower, etc. Here are the brief reports you can compare to last month: I will also try to get back online after the fact and try to redo a real Newsletter with all info as of July 21st. Here are today's numbers for languages with 200+ eBooks: Grand total for today: 29326 24725 English en 1442 French fr 587 German de 508 Finnish fi 433 Dutch nl 402 Chinese zh 338 Portuguese pt 242 Spanish es 202 Italian it Courtesy of Greg Newby. Here are the weekly totals: day | cnt ----------------+----- Fri 2009-07-10 | 9 Sat 2009-07-11 | 11 Sun 2009-07-12 | 11 Mon 2009-07-13 | 11 Tue 2009-07-14 | 7 Wed 2009-07-15 | 8 Thu 2009-07-16 | 8 Courtesy of Marcello Perathoner We have recently been averaging just under 10 books per day with some very good days that are much better. If we are lucky, we may do 3,500 to 4,000 books for 2009. Not to mention the hundreds of books that have been updated and improved, corrected, etc. Many thanks to all who have helped us reach our 39th year! Michael S. Hart Founder Project Gutenberg