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PGLAF Board Minutes 2026-06-20
by Robert Tonsing 18 Sep '26

18 Sep '26

Regards, ~ Robert

2 6

Fwd: Replace/remove of 1048 Human read and Computer-generated audiobooks at PG
by Support Gutenberg 03 Aug '26

03 Aug '26

Dear Eric and PG Board, Please find a copy below of about a dozen or more emails that Eric, Greg and I discussed back and forth for the needed corrections, replacement, and delisting for the old audiobooks on the site and the need to add and integrate the new AI audiobooks into the site. To summarize our previous discussions regarding the 1048 human-read and computer-generated audiobooks at Project Gutenberg and the need to add the 70k AI audiobooks: - Proposals for Improvement: I suggested several enhancements to the catalog of audiobooks, including cross-referencing audiobooks with their source ebooks, improving file naming conventions for better identification of chapters/formats, offering combined ZIP files or single-file versions for easier downloading, delisting the legacy audiobooks all together, and replacing them with the 70K or AI Audiobooks. In November I emailed Eric several times to inform him: “Let me know how you want me to deliver and help to integrate the next batch of 70k mp3 into the PG website?” I would prefer FTP access to iBiblio or pglaf.org, so I can upload them for review and inclusion. - Greg’s and Eric’s Feedback : Greg noted that while these changes are technically possible through database edits or SQL commands, they would be difficult to automate. He expressed a desire for any work to be coordinated with Roger and Percival. However, he also noted that many of the legacy text-to-speech files are of low quality and suggested that our focus might be better placed on directing users to external partners like LibriVox or Microsoft. To summarize Eric’s reply to this was he had no interest in adding Audiobooks to PG, and felt folks can just go to the external link. Eric also mentioned Technical Challenges, repeatedly mentioning that PG currently has no FTP access and no existing method to easily integrate these audiobooks into the current system. However, I guess he is not aware, but PG does have a robust high-speed FTP server. Our FTP mirroring protocol uses it every day to synchronize the Gutenberg books to our local mirror on our cloud server. Eric might want to check https://www.gutenberg.org/MIRRORS.ALL for all the FTP configuration settings. I had also written about five different articles in the monthly newsletter and posted on X about the Ai Audiobooks development in detail. I hope that the following forwarded emails, helps to clarify the numerous audiobooks conversations we have had. Best regards, John ------------- John Guagliardo Volunteer Support Project Gutenberg Gutenberg.org *Project Gutenberg* Online Library of free eBooks *Gutenberg.org* On Fri, Jul 31, 2026 at 5:52 PM Eric Hellman <eric(a)hellman.net> wrote: Please resend the emails you mention. I have not received anything > resembling what you describe. Maybe lost in spam? > > Eric > > On Jul 31, 2026, at 7:35 PM, Support Gutenberg < > central.gutenberg(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > > Dear PG Board, > > I just took a look at the webcast from the last meeting, want to make sure > you folks are aware I’m partnir the AI development team. For the last > couple years, I’ve been working closely with The Audiobooks project folks. > You will notice I am one of the contributors for the IEEE paper and am > listed as one of the contributing developers. I’ve attend the development > meetings and am part of the AI audiobook team slack. Please let me know > how I can be of assistance. > > I have sent multiple email to Eric and Greg with extensive notes and > proposals on how we could best integrate the AI Audiobooks and how best to > clear out the old legacy rubbish that is currently on the site. Perhaps he > can share a copy of those emails and ideas with you folks too. > > Best regards, > > John > > ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Eric Hellman <eric(a)hellman.net> Date: Fri, Nov 14, 2025 at 9:15 AM Subject: Re: Replace/remove of 1048 Human read and Computer-generated audiobooks at PG To: Support Gutenberg <central.gutenberg(a)gmail.com> Call we schedule a call? There is no ftp on ibiblio, there is no existing method to integrate the audiobooks. Eric On Nov 14, 2025, at 1:20 PM, Support Gutenberg <central.gutenberg(a)gmail.com> wrote: Eric, I think we need to include the AI audiobooks. Especially since Newby’s wiki page says: In 2023, the Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection was named as one of "The Best Inventions of 2023" by TIMEmagazine, after the organization collaborated with Microsoft and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to employ text-to-speech technology to transform 5,000 books into artificial intelligence-narrated audiobooks. Let me know how you want me to deliver and help to integrate the next batch of 70k mp3 into the PG website? I would prefer FTP access to iBiblio or PGLAF, so I can upload them for review and inclusion. Best regards, John ------------- John Guagliardo Volunteer Support Project Gutenberg Gutenberg.org *Project Gutenberg* Online Library of free eBooks *Gutenberg.org* On Fri, Nov 14, 2025 at 8:28 AM Support Gutenberg < central.gutenberg(a)gmail.com> wrote: Eric, What are your thoughts on where to store these files? There are terabytes of files on different PG servers owned by gbnewby. For example /data/gbn on inferno is 3.7T. It seems to be related to the microsoft audioproject. Are those files the master copies? Are they a mirror? Are they important at all given they are two years old? I have cataloged in an excel sheet these 5k of mp3 files and 65k more of the next phase. John ------------- John Guagliardo Volunteer Support Project Gutenberg Gutenberg.org *Project Gutenberg* Online Library of free eBooks *Gutenberg.org* On Sat, Nov 1, 2025 at 11:42 AM Eric Hellman <eric(a)hellman.net> wrote: What I think is a good longterm goal is to have a general method to link to *typed* related resources. (by typed, I mean human-read audiobooks, generated audiiobooks etc. We do wikipedia links, for example. We can use the same method to add links to the MIT-microsoft collection, to librivox, and to other editions in our catalog which we do awkwardly in the notes field0. The database has well developed data fields to support this but we have no workflow to support it. I trust you recognize that doing this well is a significant project requiring collaboration between a number of PG teams. The existing audio books currently at PG are a different matter. IMHO 90% of them should be de-indexed and ignored. We are shitty at presenting them. We can put a bandaid on them but bandaids tend to (and do!) come off. We can best serve our audiobook users by helping them find the audiobooks and then send them (with links!) to people like librivox that we are aligned in mission with and do a great job presenting audiobooks. Eric On Nov 1, 2025, at 2:26 PM, Support Gutenberg <central.gutenberg(a)gmail.com> wrote: Eric, Here is the resend of the email. My list of suggestions and Greg’s comments. Best regards, John ------------- John Guagliardo Volunteer Support Project Gutenberg Gutenberg.org *Project Gutenberg* Online Library of free eBooks *Gutenberg.org* On Sat, Sep 20, 2025 at 11:01 AM Support Gutenberg < central.gutenberg(a)gmail.com> wrote: Dear Eric, Here are the suggestions for how to improve audiobook presentation on Gutenberg.org. Best regards, John > ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Greg Newby <gbnewby(a)pglaf.org> Date: Tue, May 13, 2025 at 6:36 PM Subject: Re: 1048 Human read and Computer-generated audiobooks at PG To: Support Gutenberg <central.gutenberg(a)gmail.com> Hi John. I'm always happy to correspond :) Thoughts below:a On Tue, May 13, 2025 at 10:52:21AM -1000, Support Gutenberg wrote: > Dear Greg, > > Sorry to disturb you, but I have a few questions for whenever you have the > energy to reply. > > I was reviewing Browse By Category: Audio Book, human-read | Project > Gutenberg <https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/categories/1> and Browse By > Category: Audio Book, computer-generated | Project Gutenberg > <https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/categories/2> had a few comments and > recommendations. > > Here are the suggestions for example record > https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22446 > > 1. What do you think about combining audiobooks/# with having a reference > to the ebook/# that the audio book was created from; e.g., > https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30624, so the patrons can read along with > the audio? Since https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30624 was the text file > used to create the audio version at https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22446 , > what do you think about adding a single file version or zip file of the > combined chapters of audio files to the details page that has the source > file, or at least adding a cross reference to each other? That can be done. It would involve editing the catalog database, file by file (for around 1000 files) or of crafting the needed SQL "insert" commands. It's not going to be easy to automate, though Johannes might have ideas for putting an LLM to work on the task. He did the links to Wikipedia books for thousands of titles successfully. > 2. On the details page for the audiobooks (i.e., > https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22446 ), the list of files that are > available are not identified as differentiated. They are all displayed > with the same title name. The title phrase could include the file name or > chapter name in the hyperlink reference <a> </a>. Yeah, that's an artifact of mostly not having a nice index page that links to all the files in order. To make this work as expected, we'd need to add a file like 22446-h/22446-h.htm linking to the individual files (which might be in ../ogg/22466-01.ogg, for example) We can push a new 22466-h.htm easily enough, following our standards, and it will "just work." But it needs to follow our standards so it's in the right place for the catalog database to find & use it. This would be a good task for Percival. Roger is an expert in what needs to be done, and I'd want Percival's work to filter through Roger. It's not hard, but it's picky - the PG back end needs files to have specific names & directory locations for the automation to work as expected. > <a href="/files/22446/ogg/22446-01.ogg > <https://www.gutenberg.org/files/22446/ogg/22446-01.ogg>" type="audio/ogg" > class="link " title="Download">Ogg Vorbis Audio</a> *change to* title=" > Download">Ogg Vorbis Audio 22446-01 > <https://www.gutenberg.org/files/22446/ogg/22446-01.ogg></a> <a href=" > /files/22446/ogg/22446-02.ogg > <https://www.gutenberg.org/files/22446/ogg/22446-02.ogg>" type="audio/ogg" > class="link " title="Download">Ogg Vorbis Audio</a> *change to *title=" > Download">Ogg Vorbis Audio 22446-02 > <https://www.gutenberg.org/files/22446/ogg/22446-02.ogg></a> For ebook > 22446 there are 4 file format types; speex, MP3, Apple iTunes, and Ogg. > They all have one file per chapter, 12 chapters times 4 formats, which > creates 48 links to files that have no specific reference to the title. > This could be improved by including the file name, which includes the > chapter in the name, so no additional cataloging would be needed. Just a > minor change to the xml display page. > [image: 5-13-2025.JPG] > 3. What do you think about including a combined version of the version > types, so I patron can play/download all 12 chapters with a single click? Sure, but do you want to do so much work on these crappy-ass audio files? They are mostly terrible. Combining a bunch of MP3 files into a single file is pretty easy to automate, and this task could be combined with #1 and #2 above. I have basically abandoned the legacy audio files. They are messy to deal with, but more importantly they are just not very good. > 4. What do you think about the files when they open, they go to a new > window/tab or iframe, rather than being sent to a page without navigations? I don't have a strong view on this. Usually we keep people in the same window for reading a book online, but I have no objection to opening in a new tab or window. What we don't want to do is get into the audio player business. We need the player to be whatever people have on their computer/browser, without Javascript or anything else that is needed for playback. > If you are interested in moving forward with any of the ideas, I could work > directly with the catalogers to help with implementation, so as not to take > up your time or energy? I encourage any ideas for improvements, and at the same time feel like this is putting lipstick on a pig. The human readings are excellent, and mostly available elsewhere. The Microsoft readings are good, but we don't host them and I don't want to - they no longer fall under our collection development policy. The 700ish text-to-speech files are, generally, terrible. We're better off sending people to Microsoft and Librivox, which is the point of the audio blurb on the main page of https://www.gutenberg.org That said, I'm happy to guide you & Percival to work with Roger and me to make some improvements. Thanks as always. ~ Greg -- ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: *Eric Hellman* <eric(a)hellman.net> Date: Mon, Sep 22, 2025 at 4:47 PM Subject: Re: 1048 Human read and Computer-generated audiobooks at PG To: Support Gutenberg <central.gutenberg(a)gmail.com> CC: Greg Newby <gbnewby(a)pglaf.org> I had some students link up the librivox titles, and Standard Ebooks versions to the corresponding pg books for an aggregation site funded by the Knight Foundation. It worked nicely but we decided it solved no user problems and added little so it was mostly turned off. Eric On Sep 22, 2025, at 6:27 PM, Support Gutenberg <central.gutenberg(a)gmail.com> wrote: Dear Eric, Yes, Percival was hired in 2021 by WLF to clean up and maintain the Self.Gutenberg.org <http://self.gutenberg.org/> website. He was hired to fix up lots of problems created when our previous programmer got sick and unexpectedly hospitalized for about a half a year. After 2022, when Percival's one year contract was up, the World Library Foundation kept him on. Since there is a considerable amount of code overlap between the PG author's community and our WLF sites, he is also now become our general Webmaster too. The Self publishing portal and Gutenberg Central were created about 9 years ago. It costs WLF about 20K a year to maintain it. We appreciated PG helping out back in 2021 to pick up one of those years. WLF had lost all of our funding during the pandemic and needed the help. Regarding the audiobooks, Librivox has provided us with a CSV for about 33K of meta records (download <https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1s8Tlab_cuPl8oqQqU8zHLp8fYWmPDbXanpx…>). If PG wants to delist the previous audiobooks, there are some really nice ones the Librivox folks have made to replace them with. I recommend delisting rather than deleting the previous ebooks generations, and redirecting the links to the Librivox ones that were created from PG books. Personally, I love listening to the Librivox ones, and think they would make a nice addition. I also really like the AI generated ones too. If you foks rather not deal with the Mp3 audiobooks and Mp4 videobooks, WLF can help with it at Gutenberg Central. It may take a few months to resurrect the portal and bring its development current. But the idea of Gutenberg Central was to create a single OPAC and Full Text discovery portal for all the PG eBooks, Self-published titles, Librivox AudioBooks, and other tangential PG derivative efforts, such as Penn State Electronic Classics, Djvu Editions Classic Literature, and Daniel Mozz's AI VideoBooks (link <http://central.gutenberg.us/Members/DanielMozz>), etc... The development was discontinued due to the cost to keep it updated. You can view our beta-development at http://central.gutenberg.us/Results?SearchEverything=tempest. The Beta site is slow and NOT fully developed but, this link can give you an idea of the direction. Best regards, John ------------- John Guagliardo Volunteer Support Project Gutenberg Gutenberg.org *Project Gutenberg* Online Library of free eBooks *Gutenberg.org* On Sun, Sep 21, 2025 at 3:39 AM Eric Hellman <eric(a)hellman.net> wrote: Percival works for you? I know the #2 problem. It's bothered me too, but as we're not adding new audiobooks, fixing it has been a low priority. We have the same problem with other types of material - data, images, etc. I think the solution for all these three is to generate README.html pages with links - we could treat these more like books. We could then stop the context-free file lists on the bib pages. This would be done in ebookmaker. I think it's mentioned in the ebookmaker roadmap issue, but please comment there if you can: https://github.com/gutenbergtools/ebookmaker/issues/258 But also, the computer generated audio files are problematic for *several* copyright reasons and we should waste as little time on them as possible. I would just remove them, but Greg has emphasized that PG does its best not to remove things, and I think that's a sensible policy, too. Problem #1 gets reshaped by this solution a bit. Eric On Sep 20, 2025, at 5:01 PM, Support Gutenberg <central.gutenberg(a)gmail.com> wrote: Dear Eric, Here are the suggestions for how to improve audiobook presentation on Gutenberg.org. Best regards, John ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: *Greg Newby* <gbnewby(a)pglaf.org> Date: Tue, May 13, 2025 at 6:36 PM Subject: Re: 1048 Human read and Computer-generated audiobooks at PG To: Support Gutenberg <central.gutenberg(a)gmail.com> Hi John. I'm always happy to correspond :) Thoughts below:a On Tue, May 13, 2025 at 10:52:21AM -1000, Support Gutenberg wrote: > Dear Greg, > > Sorry to disturb you, but I have a few questions for whenever you have the > energy to reply. > > I was reviewing Browse By Category: Audio Book, human-read | Project > Gutenberg <https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/categories/1> and Browse By > Category: Audio Book, computer-generated | Project Gutenberg > <https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/categories/2> had a few comments and > recommendations. > > Here are the suggestions for example record > https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22446 > > 1. What do you think about combining audiobooks/# with having a reference > to the ebook/# that the audio book was created from; e.g., > https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30624, so the patrons can read along with > the audio? Since https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30624 was the text file > used to create the audio version at https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22446 , > what do you think about adding a single file version or zip file of the > combined chapters of audio files to the details page that has the source > file, or at least adding a cross reference to each other? That can be done. It would involve editing the catalog database, file by file (for around 1000 files) or of crafting the needed SQL "insert" commands. It's not going to be easy to automate, though Johannes might have ideas for putting an LLM to work on the task. He did the links to Wikipedia books for thousands of titles successfully. > 2. On the details page for the audiobooks (i.e., > https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22446 ), the list of files that are > available are not identified as differentiated. They are all displayed > with the same title name. The title phrase could include the file name or > chapter name in the hyperlink reference <a> </a>. Yeah, that's an artifact of mostly not having a nice index page that links to all the files in order. To make this work as expected, we'd need to add a file like 22446-h/22446-h.htm linking to the individual files (which might be in ../ogg/22466-01.ogg, for example) We can push a new 22466-h.htm easily enough, following our standards, and it will "just work." But it needs to follow our standards so it's in the right place for the catalog database to find & use it. This would be a good task for Percival. Roger is an expert in what needs to be done, and I'd want Percival's work to filter through Roger. It's not hard, but it's picky - the PG back end needs files to have specific names & directory locations for the automation to work as expected. > <a href="/files/22446/ogg/22446-01.ogg > <https://www.gutenberg.org/files/22446/ogg/22446-01.ogg>" type="audio/ogg" > class="link " title="Download">Ogg Vorbis Audio</a> *change to* title=" > Download">Ogg Vorbis Audio 22446-01 > <https://www.gutenberg.org/files/22446/ogg/22446-01.ogg></a> <a href=" > /files/22446/ogg/22446-02.ogg > <https://www.gutenberg.org/files/22446/ogg/22446-02.ogg>" type="audio/ogg" > class="link " title="Download">Ogg Vorbis Audio</a> *change to *title=" > Download">Ogg Vorbis Audio 22446-02 > <https://www.gutenberg.org/files/22446/ogg/22446-02.ogg></a> For ebook > 22446 there are 4 file format types; speex, MP3, Apple iTunes, and Ogg. > They all have one file per chapter, 12 chapters times 4 formats, which > creates 48 links to files that have no specific reference to the title. > This could be improved by including the file name, which includes the > chapter in the name, so no additional cataloging would be needed. Just a > minor change to the xml display page. > [image: 5-13-2025.JPG] > 3. What do you think about including a combined version of the version > types, so I patron can play/download all 12 chapters with a single click? Sure, but do you want to do so much work on these crappy-ass audio files? They are mostly terrible. Combining a bunch of MP3 files into a single file is pretty easy to automate, and this task could be combined with #1 and #2 above. I have basically abandoned the legacy audio files. They are messy to deal with, but more importantly they are just not very good. > 4. What do you think about the files when they open, they go to a new > window/tab or iframe, rather than being sent to a page without navigations? I don't have a strong view on this. Usually we keep people in the same window for reading a book online, but I have no objection to opening in a new tab or window. What we don't want to do is get into the audio player business. We need the player to be whatever people have on their computer/browser, without Javascript or anything else that is needed for playback. > If you are interested in moving forward with any of the ideas, I could work > directly with the catalogers to help with implementation, so as not to take > up your time or energy? I encourage any ideas for improvements, and at the same time feel like this is putting lipstick on a pig. The human readings are excellent, and mostly available elsewhere. The Microsoft readings are good, but we don't host them and I don't want to - they no longer fall under our collection development policy. The 700ish text-to-speech files are, generally, terrible. We're better off sending people to Microsoft and Librivox, which is the point of the audio blurb on the main page of https://www.gutenberg.org That said, I'm happy to guide you & Percival to work with Roger and me to make some improvements. Thanks as always. ~ Greg ---------- Forwarded message --------- Greg Newby <gbnewby(a)petascale.org>, Ilana Kingsley <stinkypup(a)gmail.com>; John Guagliardo <central.gutenberg(a)gmail.com>, Happy to! Here’s the Google Doc with the reviews, please feel free to add comments directly. On Mon, Dec 15, 2025 at 5:41 PM > LARGE SCALE AUDIOBOOK SYNTHESIS USING LLMS AND TEXT-TO-SPEECH is Amazing!! > Can you also share a Google doc with the reviews so we can all look at it > together?? > > On Mon, 15 Dec 2025 at 4:33 pm, > >> Hi Everyone, >> I think the reviews are generally positive! I'm quite impressed by the >> quality of the reviews; they are substantial and well elaborated. >> >> Stella, could you draft the rebuttal mainly focusing on comments form the >> third reviewer? >> Also, note that this rebuttal will be read by the Area Chairs instead of >> the reviewers. >> >> Best, >> Zhiyao >> >> -------- >> >> Zhiyao Duan >> >> Professor – *ECE <https://www.hajim.rochester.edu/ece/>*, *CS >> <https://www.cs.rochester.edu/>*, *GIDS >> <https://www.sas.rochester.edu/dsc/>* of University of Rochester >> >> Director – *Audio Information Research (AIR) Lab >> <https://labsites.rochester.edu/air/>* >> >> President – *International Society for Music Information Retrieval >> <https://ismir.net/>* >> >> Co-Founder - *Violy <https://violy.app/>* >> >> Mail: University of Rochester, 720 Computer Studies Building, Rochester, >> NY 14627, USA >> Tel: +1 585-275-5302 >> >> Web: *http://www.ece.rochester.edu/~zduan/ >> <http://www.ece.rochester.edu/~zduan/>* >> >> >> ------------------------------ >> *From:* ICASSP 2026 <papers(a)2026.ieeeicassp.org> >> *Sent:* Monday, December 15, 2025 3:57 PM >> Greg Newby <gbnewby(a)petascale.org>; Ilana Kingsley <stinkypup(a)gmail.com >> >; John Guagliardo <central.gutenberg(a)gmail.com>; >> *Subject:* [EXT] ICASSP 2026: Author response requested by 22 December >> [Paper #14348] >> >> Dear Greg Newby, John Guagliardo: >> >> Paper ID: 14348 >> Title: LARGE SCALE AUDIOBOOK SYNTHESIS USING LLMS AND TEXT-TO-SPEECH >> >> Your paper has undergone the peer review process, and the program >> committee has requested a response to the reviews from the authors. >> >> You may now prepare a response (400 words maximum), which will be >> reviewed by the Area Chair prior to making the final decision on your >> paper. The goal of the response is to inform the Area Chair of major >> misunderstandings or incorrect statements in the review reports. Therefore >> the rebuttal should focus only on major critiques. We recommend to group >> reviewers' comments into a few major categories; prioritize and focus on >> addressing major concerns, and also condense the response down to the >> essentials. >> >> Please note that submitting a response is an optional step for you to >> address the reviewers' comments, rebut factual errors or to supply >> additional information requested by the reviewers. >> >> >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://cmsworkshops.com/ICASSP2026/papers/auth… >> Paper Number: 14348 >> Paper Password: 6E04C8B5 >> >> Responses are due on 22 December 2025, in order to review and send out >> the acceptance/rejection notifications on time. >> >> Kind regards, >> Christian Jutten, Markus Rupp and Tülay Adalı >> ICASSP 2026 Technical Program Chairs >> papers(a)2026.ieeeicassp.org >> >> -end- --

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Fwd: Meeting assets for PGLAF Board Meeting are ready!
by Eric Hellman 01 Aug '26

01 Aug '26

> Begin forwarded message: > > From: "'Zoom' via eric and karen" <ek(a)hellman.net> > Subject: Meeting assets for PGLAF Board Meeting are ready! > Date: July 25, 2026 at 2:22:22 PM EDT > To: ek(a)hellman.net > Reply-To: Zoom <no-reply(a)zoom.us> > > <https://zoom.com/> > Meeting assets for PGLAF Board Meeting are ready! > > Review action items <https://us06web.zoom.us/launch/aic?mid=zsSlctawQ0%2Bv4%2F7JFwb9vg%3D%3D&ori…> > Recording > > <https://us06web.zoom.us/launch/hub?type=recording&mid=zsSlctawQ0%2Bv4%2F7JF…> > Duration: 00:59:20 > Shareable link: https://us06web.zoom.us/rec/share/ZiwNTBGY2JNWpWshexyuBaOX8wCcBKv6_uX-J-020… > Passcode: 7nxe@#Tw > View in Zoom <https://us06web.zoom.us/launch/hub?type=recording&mid=zsSlctawQ0%2Bv4%2F7JF…> > Thank you for choosing Zoom, > The Zoom Team > <https://www.linkedin.com/company/zoom/> <https://twitter.com/zoom> <https://instagram.com/zoom> <https://www.facebook.com/zoom> <https://www.youtube.com/@Zoom> <https://blog.zoom.us/> > Zoom.com > <https://zoom.com/>55 Almaden Blvd > San Jose, CA 95113 > <https://www.google.com/maps/place/55+Almaden+Blvd,+San+Jose,+CA+95113/@37.3…>+1.888.799.9666 <tel:1-888-799-9666> > © 2026 Zoom Communications, Inc. >

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preparing for 2026-2027 budget
by Eric Hellman 03 Jul '26

03 Jul '26

In preparation for our board meeting on the 20th, I have started working on a budget for the 2026-2027 fiscal year. The first step is to assess our financial performance vs budget for the current fiscal year; we only had a budget for Jan-Jun. Attached is a spreadsheet showing the actuals through today. The revenue side looks quite good; I've separated out the legacy donation and the grant from the Manton Foundation; even without those, our income is already $1,200 over budget, and I expect several thousand more by the end of the month. On the expenses side, we are $18,000 under budget, and even with one payroll left to go, we should finish at about $10,000 under budget. I am planning to present a budget to you totalling at about $210,000 for 2026-2027, which will include about 20,000 of spending paid for by the grant we received. Only about $5K of the 25K grant will have been spent in the current fiscal year. Eric

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Functional Trade offs for Better Anonymity
by onion Links 01 Jul '26

01 Jul '26

When you browse a directory of script free onion services, you will notice the design is very basic. There are no sliding banners or pop up notifications - this simplicity is the gold standard for high security communication. It ensures that there is no hidden code running in the background that could ping a remote server with your real IP address. For many, a site that "doesn't work" without scripts is a site that is not worth the risk of visiting. https://onionlink.live/blog/no-js-onion-sites The trade off is purely functional - You lose the convenience of modern web apps but you gain peace of mind. Many users prefer sites that are built to be "static" meaning the content is delivered exactly as it is stored on the server without needing your computer to do any extra processing - this approach removes the variables that lead to security leaks. If a site is essential to you but requires scripts, you must decide if the information you are seeking is worth the potential exposure of your browser's unique signature.

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6 month summary
by Eric Hellman 19 Jun '26

19 Jun '26

Summary of first six months Eric Hellman, Executive Director While this summary primarily covers January-June of 2026, the second half of our fiscal year, it should be noted that the organization survived the first half despite the devastating loss of its longtime leader, Greg Newby. We had time to prepare for a transition, but there are some things you just can't prepare for. I am thankful for everyone who pitched in to make a successful transition possible. My objectives for the 6 month period Jan-Jun 2026 combined short term objectives and longer term strategies. For the most part we successfully met most of our short-term objectives, though most of them were a lot more work than expected. Stabilizing the finances Closing our Salt Lake City office dramatically reduced one set of expenses, freeing up cash to augment much needed sysadmin capability in the absence of Greg Newby. The task of establishing financial reporting and clarity was much more difficult than anticipated, as it took over 5 months to get control of our bank account and start earning interest on our significant cash balance. Paypal continues to be a growing source of donations, but importing Paypal transactions into Quickbooks correctly has frequently resulted in time-consuming manual labor. We have applied for an investment account at Fidelity Investments, but that has taken much longer than anticipated. Our expenses for the 6 months of 2026 have been lower than the budgeted amount, and income has been above budget, even when we omit the grant we received from the Manton Foundation and the bequest from the O'Brien family. I expect we'll end the full fiscal year a bit above break-even without the $500K bequest, which is an excellent result, considering that we started the calendar year with a fiscal-year deficit of over $36,000; no budget plan existed. The $500,000 bequest we received is testament to the value we provide to our readers; we established an investment policy and expect it to provide continuing income towards our long-term sustainability. Stabilizing the operations Beginning the year, Project Gutenberg was loaded with "technical debt". Years and years of dependence on volunteer developers coupled with a finite amount of Greg led to accretion of messy, undocumented code. Our websites depended on 3 completely separate website frameworks and 6 different programming languages, and there was no list of what was actually running or where it was running. Thanks largely to the efforts of Casey, Dan and Robert, we now have documented most of our systems, put our code under version control, and cleaned up a number of messes. While we still depend on volunteer developers, those developers can now focus on new capabilities and features without having to be software archeologists. We have new issues to deal with as well. Traffic to our website has increased almost 10-fold from a year ago, driven largely by aggressively stupid AI scraping bots. It is now common for our servers to serve 4 million files in a single day, to 2 million different IP addresses. This has increasingly impacted readers via connection timeouts. Casey has taken the lead in working with ibiblio staff to identify bottlenecks in our web infrastructure. The experience of having to transition many accounts has caused us to be vigilant about security and contingency planning. I'm pleased to share that passwords and 2FA keys are now secured by a 1Password account that can be accessed by 3 different people in exceptional circumstances. Innovation While Accessibility improvements have been part of our development program more for than a year, we did not expect that we would be subject to ADA title II regulations. In early April we found out that UNC would be requiring us to work towards those accessibility requirements in order to continue in the ibiblio hosting environment. Our previous accessibility work put us in a good position to bring our website platform into full compliance by May and a grant from the Manton Foundation will help us to begin assessing our entire book collection for accessibility. This assessment will start with volunteer training by Laura Brady, a world expert on EPUB accessibility and huge fan of Project Gutenberg. While the "Altpoet" editing facility for alt-text descriptions has not progressed much, it has attracted a lot of attention in the Accessibility community and it will be a key component of our ebook mitigation work. Last year's addition of AI generated summaries has proven to be a popular addition to our website, although a small number of low-quality summaries provoked critical comment. These comments have been largely addressed by use of Wikipedia-driven summaries where appropriate, and integration of the summary generation into the ebook processing workflow continues. One innovation we have facilitated was largely driven by our friends at Distributed Proofreaders. Books with mathematics content are now starting to take advantage of wider support and tooling for MathML, and the results have been excellent. Our older books used small images to show math content and these were both ugly and inaccessible. Awareness We have made a fair amount of progress towards making people more aware of Project Gutenberg. We're still here, we're still free, still no advertising, and we're not "That site that has just plain text" any more. Though a key demographic for us is older and often retired, when I speak about Project Gutenberg to 'civilians' I have found a higher awareness among teachers and younger people - the demographic that lived through remote schooling during COVID. A recent post about us on "Hacker News" went viral and it was clear that the commenters were both recent and longtime fans. Our social media team has done an amazing job of growing their audiences and promoting engagement with Project Gutenberg books and authors. A believe that the team's work is responsible for a good part of the consistent growth in small donations via PayPal and Buy Me A Coffee. In parallel, the monthly newsletter has matured into a valuable communications channel with our readers. Community A sense of community is vital to any predominantly volunteer-based organization, and the past 9 months have seen a shift from a mostly email-based community to a Slack space supplemented by email. A Code of Conduct has been adopted. It's a start. Outreach has brought new people into the community and is reconnecting some folks who have drifted away. We need to do better and make people feel empowered and appreciated. I'll next write about objectives for next year.

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Clarification on Budget Structure and Tax Record Alignment
by John Guagliardo 12 Jun '26

12 Jun '26

Eric, I wanted to follow up on the budget presentation to ensure our financial reporting is entirely accurate and aligned with standard compliance practices. Looking over the current draft, it appears there may be an overlap between the 2025–2026 and 2026–2027 periods, and splitting into seminal periods. To ensure absolute clarity and regulatory compliance, we cannot present three years of tax records across two semi-combined budgets. For the presentation to be effective and accurate, we need to adhere to a few strict structural principles: Strict Annual Separation: Each fiscal year must be kept completely distinct from both prior and subsequent years. Dedicated Reporting Tables: Each specific year requires its own dedicated annual table reflecting both budgeted figures and actuals. No Cross-Period Mixing: We cannot mix and match months across different fiscal years within the same data set. Structuring the data this way ensures our tax records map perfectly to our budgets and prevents any misinterpretation of our financial health. Thank you for separate these periods correctly before the it’s presentation to the board. Regards, John ------------- John Guagliardo Ph.D Executive Director World Library Foundation (415) 237-3054 Skype: WorldLibrary John(a)WorldLibrary.org World Library Where the World Goes to Read WorldLibrary.org > On Jun 11, 2026, at 9:23 AM, Eric Hellman <eric(a)hellman.net> wrote: > For for 26-27, we'll only have budget comparisons to 25-26. You are welcome to glean prior years info from the 990s available from the link I sent. > > Eric Hellman > Executive Director > Project Gutenberg > > If you appreciate the work we do, donations are always appreciated! https://www.gutenberg.org/donate/ > >> On Jun 11, 2026, at 2:11 PM, John Guagliardo <john.worldlibrary(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> >> Eric, >> >> Can I ask your help to clarify the previous years’ spending with your budget for 2026. You seem to be combining half years of 2024/2025 and 2025/2026 and missing annual totals. It’s really confusing to review and evaluate. >> >> Before voting on approving this years budget we will need to compare 2026 operating budget to 2025 and 2024 spending so we can better understand what is being achieved. When presenting this budget please make available for the board the previous few years actual spending along side 2026. This information should be readily accessible for us. >> >> Best regards, >> >> John >> >> ------------- >> John Guagliardo Ph.D >> Executive Director >> World Library Foundation >> (415) 237-3054 >> Skype: WorldLibrary >> John(a)WorldLibrary.org >> >> >> >> World Library >> Where the World Goes to Read >> WorldLibrary.org >> >>> On Jun 9, 2026, at 8:32 AM, John Guagliardo <john.worldlibrary(a)gmail.com> wrote: >>> Eric, >>> >>> I think we should compare this operating budget to previous years 5 years so we can better understand what is being achieved by the substantial increase in spending. When presenting this budget please make available for the board the previous 5 years actual spending as well. This information should be readily accessible with the 990s we have in file. Did Newby have any CPA documents or spreadsheet on his budgets you can provide us to clarify the historic costs. >>> >>> Please remember this board hasn’t had the opportunity to review the previous year’s financial reports as you have. Without this additional expense reference we would not be able to make informed votes. >>> >>> Regards, >>> >>> John >>> >>> ------------- >>> John Guagliardo Ph.D >>> Executive Director >>> World Library Foundation >>> (415) 237-3054 >>> Skype: WorldLibrary >>> John(a)WorldLibrary.org >>> >>> >>> >>> World Library >>> Where the World Goes to Read >>> WorldLibrary.org >>> >>>> On Jun 8, 2026, at 10:28 AM, Eric Hellman <eric(a)hellman.net> wrote: >>>> >>>> In preparation for our board meeting on the 20th, I have started working on a budget for the 2026-2027 fiscal year. The first step is to assess our financial performance vs budget for the current fiscal year; we only had a budget for Jan-Jun. Attached is a spreadsheet showing the actuals through today. >>>> >>>> The revenue side looks quite good; I've separated out the legacy donation and the grant from the Manton Foundation; even without those, our income is already $1,200 over budget, and I expect several thousand more by the end of the month. >>>> >>>> On the expenses side, we are $18,000 under budget, and even with one payroll left to go, we should finish at about $10,000 under budget. >>>> >>>> I am planning to present a budget to you totalling at about $210,000 for 2026-2027, which will include about 20,000 of spending paid for by the grant we received. Only about $5K of the 25K grant will have been spent in the current fiscal year. >>>> >>>> Eric >>>> >>>> <q34-25-26-budget-actual.xlsx>

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May meeting minutes
by Robert Tonsing 31 May '26

31 May '26

"PGLAF Board Minutes 2026-05-16.odt" has been posted to the Slack channel. Regards, ~ Robert

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Re: Meeting assets for PGLAF Board Meeting are ready!
by Eric Hellman 24 May '26

24 May '26

> On May 16, 2026, at 2:30 PM, 'Zoom' via eric and karen <ek(a)hellman.net> wrote: > > <https://zoom.com/> > Meeting assets for PGLAF Board Meeting are ready! > > View meeting recap <https://us06web.zoom.us/launch/aic?mid=V%2F3s%2BaWmS121LtB0j1dZ5A%3D%3D&ori…> > Recording > > <https://us06web.zoom.us/launch/hub?type=recording&mid=V%2F3s%2BaWmS121LtB0j…> > Duration: 01:06:54 > Shareable link: https://us06web.zoom.us/rec/share/obqX00QwnXz8GeA3rk-b-7WeqmaKVhdrvMoiex0Xb… > Passcode: u8cd^c9+ > View in Zoom <https://us06web.zoom.us/launch/hub?type=recording&mid=V%2F3s%2BaWmS121LtB0j…> > Meeting summary > > > Quick recap > > The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation board meeting focused on organizational updates and policy discussions. Eric provided a status report indicating the organization broke even in April and is tracking well with the budget, with expected revenue from the Manton Foundation expected to arrive soon. The board adopted a new code of conduct prepared by Linda, with modifications to include reporting mechanisms for inappropriate conduct by the executive director to individual board members rather than the entire board. Eric proposed increasing his administrative salary to $3,000 per month (approximately $36,000 annually) to support hiring a successor, which the board agreed to consider as part of the next budget discussion. The board deferred discussion of the MOU and investment policy changes to the next meeting, pending further review of conflict of interest provisions and completion of the Fidelity account setup requiring wet signatures from board members. > > Next steps > > Eric > > Follow up on the legal matter regarding the Irish book copyright issue, including coordinating with the lawyer and monitoring response from the publisher. <https://tasks.zoom.us/?meetingId=V%2F3s%2BaWmS121LtB0j1dZ5A%3D%3D&stepId=10…> > Send the necessary paperwork and articles of incorporation to Fidelity to open the new account, and coordinate with Maitri for required wet signatures. <https://tasks.zoom.us/?meetingId=V%2F3s%2BaWmS121LtB0j1dZ5A%3D%3D&stepId=10…> > Make progress on obtaining insurance for the organization before the next meeting. <https://tasks.zoom.us/?meetingId=V%2F3s%2BaWmS121LtB0j1dZ5A%3D%3D&stepId=10…> > Offer and coordinate summer contracting hours for Zachary Rosario, including defining scope and budget for June. <https://tasks.zoom.us/?meetingId=V%2F3s%2BaWmS121LtB0j1dZ5A%3D%3D&stepId=10…> > Set up and/or delegate the creation of a reporting mechanism (e.g., web form) for code of conduct issues, ensuring board member contact information is accessible but not publicly exposed. <https://tasks.zoom.us/?meetingId=V%2F3s%2BaWmS121LtB0j1dZ5A%3D%3D&stepId=10…> > Work on the proposed budget for next year and circulate a draft to the board at least a week before the next meeting. <https://tasks.zoom.us/?meetingId=V%2F3s%2BaWmS121LtB0j1dZ5A%3D%3D&stepId=10…> > Send out the video recording link of the meeting by Monday. <https://tasks.zoom.us/?meetingId=V%2F3s%2BaWmS121LtB0j1dZ5A%3D%3D&stepId=10…> > Specify time zone (EDT/EST) clearly in future meeting invitations and reminder emails. <https://tasks.zoom.us/?meetingId=V%2F3s%2BaWmS121LtB0j1dZ5A%3D%3D&stepId=10…> > Linda > > Revise and send the finalized Code of Conduct (without highlighted/orange text) for sharing with the organization. <https://tasks.zoom.us/?meetingId=V%2F3s%2BaWmS121LtB0j1dZ5A%3D%3D&stepId=10…> > Consider and propose improved wording for conflict of interest disclosure in the MOU for the next meeting. <https://tasks.zoom.us/?meetingId=V%2F3s%2BaWmS121LtB0j1dZ5A%3D%3D&stepId=10…> > Maitri > > Sign and mail the required Fidelity account documents back to Eric. <https://tasks.zoom.us/?meetingId=V%2F3s%2BaWmS121LtB0j1dZ5A%3D%3D&stepId=10…> > Robert > > Prepare the minutes for this meeting. <https://tasks.zoom.us/?meetingId=V%2F3s%2BaWmS121LtB0j1dZ5A%3D%3D&stepId=10…> > Collaboration > > Linda and Maitri: Review and strengthen the MOU, particularly the conflict of interest section, and consider explicit wording about financial and reputational gain; present revised version for next meeting. <https://tasks.zoom.us/?meetingId=V%2F3s%2BaWmS121LtB0j1dZ5A%3D%3D&stepId=10…> > Eric and Maitri: Complete the setup of the Fidelity account and review investment policy options once the account is active. <https://tasks.zoom.us/?meetingId=V%2F3s%2BaWmS121LtB0j1dZ5A%3D%3D&stepId=10…> > Summary > > Financial and Administrative Updates Meeting > > The meeting began with a brief discussion about temperature preferences and email list administration issues, where Eric reported problems with the board mailing list that needed adjustment. Maitri updated the group about a recent Wells Fargo banking issue regarding proper documentation of Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation signatures that needed resolution. The meeting then formally started with Eric providing a financial status report, noting that the organization broke even in April and was on track with the budget, with expected revenue from the Manton Foundation expected to arrive that week. > > Legal and Project Updates Meeting > > Eric discussed legal matters regarding an Irish book copyright issue, with their lawyer from Morrison Forster planning to send a response to the publisher requiring them to prove their rights. The team decided to charge for their services including developer time and GeoBlock database expenses, rather than using free options. Progress was reported on Project Gutenberg infrastructure improvements, including plans to shut down FTP and Gopher servers, and the team's Git repository was successfully accessed. Eric mentioned that opening a Fidelity account required wet signatures and articles of incorporation due to money laundering regulations, and noted that a student from Stevens Tech demonstrated an OPDS server at the Innovation Expo and may work with Casey over the summer. > > OPDS Server Implementation Plans > > Eric discussed plans to implement an OPDS server to enable Project Gutenberg content to be accessed through reading applications on Mac and Android devices, with potential endorsement of apps like Palace Project and Thorium by the end of summer. He also outlined budget considerations for the next year, mentioning that the new endowment will provide $20,000-$25,000 annually in dividends and that work by Dan and Casey could result in significant cost reductions for data center expenses. > > Administrative Salary Increase Proposal > > Eric proposed increasing his administrative salary from $2,500 to $3,000 per month, equivalent to New Jersey's minimum wage for full-time work, to support hiring a successor in the future. The board expressed support for the idea but wanted to review it as part of the overall budget discussion. Eric noted that Project Gutenberg's growth requires professional staff beyond volunteers, particularly given its increasing technical and legal complexities. > > Accessibility and Code of Conduct > > The team discussed accessibility challenges in their publications, with Eric noting that different disabilities require different accommodation approaches and highlighting the need for more interactive data presentation methods. Linda praised Project Gutenberg's progress in accessibility while acknowledging their own work remains incomplete, with only hundreds of books updated out of 75,000 total. The group then reviewed a code of conduct document that Linda prepared for volunteers, paid staff, and board members, with Eric expressing approval of the customized version and emphasizing its importance as they expand their Slack community. Maitri raised a question about investigative procedures for abusive communications, which Linda acknowledged needed further discussion regarding whether reports should go to the executive director or board. > > Board Reporting Mechanism Implementation > > The group discussed implementing a reporting mechanism for inappropriate conduct involving the executive director. They agreed to add language specifying that board members should be contacted for such reports, rather than the entire board. The discussion included considerations about how to make board contact information available without exposing members to spam, with suggestions for a form or contact system that would protect privacy while enabling appropriate reporting channels. They also discussed the need for Slack moderators to handle reports within the platform, with Eric and others considering designating trusted board members like Robert or Linda as secondary moderators. > > Board Code of Conduct Adoption > > The board adopted a code of conduct with an added sentence about reporting inappropriate conduct by the executive director, though they did not specify how to contact board members directly. Linda agreed to fix the formatting and share a clean version without the orange text markers. The conversation ended with a brief discussion about reviewing an MOU, though the specific changes were not detailed in the transcript. > > Board MOU Revision Discussion > > The board discussed revising a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for board members, with Linda having simplified the document by removing requirements about attending meetings. Maitri raised concerns about conflict of interest disclosure and enforcement, suggesting the need for clearer language around financial and reputational benefits. The group agreed to further refine the conflict of interest provisions while keeping the document simple, and decided to proceed with setting up a Fidelity account before addressing the investment policy changes. > > Meeting Scheduling and Budget Updates > > The team discussed calendar invitation timing issues, with John arriving an hour late due to incorrect time zone settings on his iPhone. They confirmed the next meeting will be on June 20th, and Eric committed to sending out the meeting recording by Monday. Eric also agreed to prepare and share the draft budget at least a week before the next meeting on June 20th. > > > View in Zoom <https://us06web.zoom.us/launch/hub?type=summary&mid=V%2F3s%2BaWmS121LtB0j1d…> > AI can make mistakes. Review for accuracy. > > Please rate the accuracy of this summary. <https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/summary/feedback?meetingId=V%2F3s%2BaWmS121…> <https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/summary/feedback?meetingId=V%2F3s%2BaWmS121…> > Thank you for choosing Zoom, > The Zoom Team > <https://www.linkedin.com/company/zoom/> <https://twitter.com/zoom> <https://instagram.com/zoom> <https://www.facebook.com/zoom> <https://www.youtube.com/@Zoom> <https://blog.zoom.us/> > Zoom.com > <https://zoom.com/>55 Almaden Blvd > San Jose, CA 95113 > <https://www.google.com/maps/place/55+Almaden+Blvd,+San+Jose,+CA+95113/@37.3…>+1.888.799.9666 <tel:1-888-799-9666> > © 2026 Zoom Communications, Inc. >

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Re: board meeting tomorrow, 1PM ET
by Linda Hamilton 16 May '26

16 May '26

Here is the mou as well (I sent it out earlier) -- On May 15, 2026, at 10:10 PM, Eric Hellman <eric(a)hellman.net> wrote: Agenda for tomorrow's meeting, 1PM EDT; https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83964540489?pwd=9E7atMjspJYNv5fSkfRbBiKkbl7xP7.1 - approve circulated April minutes (attached, thanks Robert) - approve agenda - status report - we broke even in April - pro bono representation - excellent progress on code cleanup and documentation - brokerage account paperwork - no progress on insurance - please review revised code of conduct proposal (attached) - 2026-27 budget big picture - other business? MOU? additions to investment policy? - set date for June meeting <PGLAF Board Minutes 2026-04-25.pdf> <code_of_conduct_PG_may_2026.docx>

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