There is a new DVD image some folks might like to check out. You can get it interactively here: http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/pgjun05 or download the full ISO here (size=4668391424 bytes, MD5sum=eb9d00a4b1e4cb30d801709ced6da282): ftp://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/pub/gbn/pgjun05.iso This is the first major output of Craig Stephenson's program to allow people to build their own CD/DVD ISOs. I'll send a URL to the program in another week or two (it's not quite ready yet for multiple users). We started with the Best Of CD titles as core, getting updated files with an emphasis on HTML. Then, we blindly added lots more HTML, uncompressed, for a pleasurable "unzip-free" reading experience. I also made sure a few particular authors were included, in the Best Of tradition. There are a few things I know are problematic, but please inform me of any others that you spot: - a few copyrighted files snuck in (some MP3 audio and a Kafka) - the author/title index files are mixed case, and would be better in a subdirectory - there might be some Complete volumes that are partially duplicated by individual volumes. If you spot any, let me know - the author/title index pages need something like a "Link: " label for the eBook file, and also a "Language: " field. We might add a "by-language" index, in addition to the Author and Title indexes. Although I made a bunch of these for Michael Hart's visit to Alaska (public talk=Wednesday June 22 at the Fairbanks Public Library 7:00 pm), and to try to give away to AK libraries, I don't expect this to be quite polished enough to redistribute en masse. But I hope it might be the core of a new DVD option to supplement our "PG 10K Special" from December 2004. (That DVD, which is eBook 11800, is mostly zipped .txt files -- about 9400 titles). This new DVD image contains about 5100 eBooks. In a nutshell, Craig's program parses the RDF/XML catalog into a MySQL database. Then, PHP is used to provide a user with an iterative, interactive set of steps to add and delete eBooks and their formats from the ISO. Building an online browsable prototype of the ISO is simple and fast, because we use hard links (on the same filesystem as the collection mirror). Once it looks good, the actual ISO is built with mkisofs (which takes a little while) and becomes available for download via FTP (or HTTP if it's < 2GB). We'll be doing features etc., and making the code widely available (though it basically requires a complete PG mirror to work). Enjoy, and please send feedback! -- Greg