[gmonthly] Project Gutenberg Newsletter May-October 2018

Greg Newby gbnewby at pglaf.org
Thu Oct 11 17:18:51 PDT 2018


This is the Project Gutenberg Newsletter for May through October 2018


CONTENTS

* Newsletter hiatus
* NAFTA redux facing resistance in Canada
* Web Site Design
* Join Distributed Proofreaders
* Find Project Gutenberg on social media
* Where to find new eBook listings from May-September 2018

* Newsletter hiatus

Your newsletter editor missed the "first Wednesday" for several months in a row, so finally this newsletter is going to you on the SECOND Wednesday of October.  There has not been very much news to share, over the summer, and I hope that I will hear of new, interesting news items for future newsletters.


* NAFTA redux facing resistance in Canada

Recent news has covered the intended replacement for NAFTA.  This treaty was negotiated in secret, and when it was revealed it had several surprises that are proving unpopular.

One that concerns Project Gutenberg is copyright term extension.  Project Gutenberg has always focused on digitizing and distributing literature that is in the public domain in the United States.  You can learn a lot more about the procedures we use at https://copy.pglaf.org, especially in our "copyright how-to."

On January 1, 2019, Project Gutenberg will celebrate when books that were originally published in 1923 enter the public domain in the US.  In the early days of Project Gutenberg, growth of the public domain on January 1 was an annual event.  Some notable items to enter the public domain in 2019 include Felix Salten's "Bambi" and Kahlil Gibran's "The Prophet." 

In Canada, though, it looks like there can be no celebration.  The new drafted trade agreement, now called USMCA, includes extending copyright terms in Canada by 20 years.

This extension was part of an earlier treaty, the TPP, but was abandoned due, at least partially, to public outcry in Canada.

Our friends at Project Gutenberg of Canada are providing information about the situation, including how Canadians can communicate their views to their government representative.  For more information, visit https://www.gutenberg.ca


* Web Site Design

Project Gutenberg invites design ideas and input for Project Gutenberg's Web site and eBook landing pages, such as https://www.gutenberg.org and https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/100

Send an email to Greg (simply by responding to this newsletter), or you can join the gutvol-d email discussion list via: https://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d

Thanks to some external funding, the Web redesign is getting underway this fall.  The idea is to have a static HTML file for every eBook.  This will make it easier to get a full copy of the book's files and surrounding meta-data.  We are also working on friendlier filenames and other improvements.  The main criterion is to use HTML+CSS only in static files: no Javascript, database, or server-side requirements for the landing pages.  Ideas and demonstrations are welcome!


* Join Distributed Proofreaders

Visit https://www.pgdp.net to learn about how to help create some of Project Gutenberg's forthcoming eBooks!  Proofreading a page a day is easy, fun, and a great way to help bring literature to the world.


* Find Project Gutenberg on social media

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/project.gutenberg
Facebook news feed of new eBooks: https://www.facebook.com/gutenberg.new
Twitter: https://twitter.com/gutenberg_org @gutenberg_org
Twitter news feed of new eBooks: https://twitter.com/gutenberg_new @gutenberg_new

Thanks to the Project Gutenberg Social Media Team for keeping these feeds interesting!


* Where to find new eBook listings from May-September 2018

Because this newsletter covers several months, it does not include the set of new eBooks from April-September 2018.  Instead, please find the listing here:
  https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Offline_Catalogs

These two files contain the eBook listing (also known as the accession list) from 2018, and for the entire collection:
  GUTINDEX.2018 (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/GUTINDEX.2018)
  GUTINDEX.ALL (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/GUTINDEX.ALL)

If you are interested in getting notification of every new eBook when it is posted, subscribe to the "posted" email list at this address:
  https://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/posted

You can also set your subscription to the "posted" list for a digest format, which combines multiple messages into a single email.





More information about the gmonthly mailing list