Search My Notes

There are many pages of posts on many subjects, and only a few show on this main page. Search for the subjects that you are interested in.

Topics covered in here tend toward Gadgetry, Weapons, Books, Tools, and a lot of other things that have captured my interest.

Please note the "Linked From Here" tab on the results, which lists search results from sites I have linked to in my posts.

Project Gutenberg: PG & PGA


I've mentioned Project Gutenberg's free books before, but here are the details.

Project Gutenberg provides an online book catalogue and repository of downloadable public domain literature from poetry and the classics to technolgy, health and science. It was started in 1971 when founder Michael Hart, a student at the University of Illinois, was given access to one of the 15 material research lab’s mainframe computers that would become the future Internet. Four randomly selected computer operators were given accounts with a virtually unlimited amount of computer time and the encouragement to play around with it to gain as much job proficiency as possible.

Hart decided to start storing, retrieving and searching library collections. He promptly started typing the “Declaration of Independence” into the computer – the first electronic text – and later tried to send it to everyone on the network – the first version of spam.

The Declaration of Independence was followed by the American Bill of Rights, the US Constitution, the Bible, Shakespeare (a play at a time), and then by general work in the areas of literature and reference. From December 1971 to December 1993 one hundred ebooks were manually typed up and released. Scanners and OCR software have accelerated the pace since then, and Hart’s initial goal to make the 10,000 most consulted books available to the general public in electronic format by the end of the 20th century was achieved in late 2003. Today, Project Gutenberg’s online book catalog spans nearly 30,000 free e-books.

Books are being added at the rate of roughly one per hour at this time. You can subscribe to an RSS feed listing the books as they are uploaded.

Project Gutenberg Australia has fewer books -- around 2,000 -- but most of them are not available through the main PG site, as the copyright laws in OZ are not the same as in America. PGA is searchable or you may view or download a list of their books

(Me) (Home)

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)