Just to expand on one comment from Mr. Bowerbird:
paul said:
> Could it be that a lot of PG's books are rarely read,
> and the traffic seen for these books is due to people
> downloading the whole collection simply to have it?
bowerbird said:
could be.
but i doubt there are many such people.
One reason someone might download the whole collection is, they
simply wish to improve their English. As anyone from a foreign
country will tell you, English (especially American English) is a
bizarre language with rules for grammar that have apparently random
exceptions for each rule. Reading good literature in English, ANY
good literature, is one way to get a handle on the language. "English
doesn't borrow from other languages. English follows other languages
down dark alleys, knocks them over, and goes through their pockets
for loose grammar." -- Unknown
Another reason someone might download the whole collection is, they
are young. High school or first year college, with an undeclared
major. They don't know what their final career will be. So having the
whole collection means a vast library at their fingertips -- useful
no matter what their future research needs.
Oh heck, it doesn't have to be that they are young. I mean, if you
had unlimited funds, wouldn't you wish to add on to your house, a
library containing 20,000 books? That is Project Gutenberg. Would you
read all 20,000 books? No. Would you read 1,000 of them? Probably. (I
read a paperback book every three nights. I've been reading such
since I was ten. I'm now fifty three. At a guess, that's 4,000
books.) But, it's just a matter of WHICH of those books you would read.
So a Project Gutenberg client has a choice to make: Pick and choose
book titles while online (and the clock is ticking); or download the
whole shebang and then pick and choose at your leisure -- off line.
That, I think, is where a decent percentage of the "whole library"
downloads goes. "The instruction we find in books is like fire. We
fetch it from our neighbors, kindle it at home, communicate it to
others, and it becomes the property of all." -- Voltaire
Hope this helps,
Jay Toser
