Chapter I: Front Matter (1)

The Project Gutenberg FAQ 2002

by Jim Tinsley

Important: This file is posted to the Project Gutenberg archives not as a current guide, more as a historical reference. I hope that future FAQs will be posted, as the project evolves, but this one is of its time.

If you want the most up-to-date information from PG, please see the current version of the FAQ, from the Project Gutenberg site, or, at the time of posting, at:

http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg/faq/gutfaq.txt
or
http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg/faq/gutfaq.htm

Acknowledgements

Writing a FAQ for an organization of fanatical proofreaders has its ups and downs! I'd like to thank all those who corrected my facts and my typos, and especially the people who pointed out the lack of clarity in certain answers. The remaining errors and opacity are all mine.

Preface to the archive edition

Ironically, Project Gutenberg, which preserves the writings of others, doesn't have much written history itself. There are scraps of e-mails and guidelines, but many newsletters and other internal writings before 1996 have gone to the great bit-bucket in the sky.

The later half of the '90s marked a graceful blooming of Project Gutenberg's growth. Three related technical factors contributed: the explosion in home PCs brought standardization, which made it easy for non-techies to install scanners, which, in response to the new demand, became plentiful and cheap. And, of course, these years saw the rise in popularity of the Internet, which has always been PG's main channel of communication and distribution.

However, while PG's production expanded geometrically, at Moore's Law rates, there were barriers to participation. Most volunteers had to find an eligible book, scan or type it, and proof the resulting text all by themselves. This was and is a fairly significant amount of work: 40 painstaking hours would be a typical commitment for one book.

Beyond that, simply learning the mechanics of producing e-texts could be a serious challenge for newcomers. Nearly all internal PG communication, except for the Newsletter, was by private e-mail, and instructions had to be repeated many times to individual new volunteers, all of whom showed up with great good will, but most of whom vanished after a week or two.

Michael Hart was unstinting in his editing of incoming texts and handling questions by e-mail, but any one person has only so many hours.

The Directors of Production at the time -- Sue Asscher, Dianne Bean, John Bickers and David Price -- served as contact points for advice and help, made enormous efforts of production themselves, and tried to share the scanned texts among new volunteers for proofing. They made a huge contribution to building community in PG.

Pietro Di Miceli set up a web site for the project in 1996, and with the popularization of the Web (as opposed to the Internet), this became a beacon for readers and new volunteers.

All of these people reached out to willing volunteers, drew them in, helped them, encouraged them. The Project and all of the readers of the books, now and in the future, owe these people a great debt. Without them, Project Gutenberg could not have achieved what it has. But still, for the most part, each volunteer worked alone.

In 1999, I wrote, in response to an offer to volunteer:

I think I can best answer your offer, and many others like it,
by giving an extended description of what actually happens in
the making of PG texts, and why it's often not easy to get
started.

There is no agenda, no master list of tasks ready to be given to
volunteers. This is often the hardest thing to get across to new
volunteers. I know I waited quite a while after volunteering for
someone to give me a job to do before I realized it.

Exactly five steps are normally performed in the publishing of
an e-text.

1. Someone, somewhere gets a public-domain copy of a text they
want to contribute.

2. That volunteer confirms its PD status by sending TP&V to
Michael, and getting copyright clearance.

3. Someone, usually the same volunteer, scans and corrects the
text, or, if skilled in typing, types the book into an e-text.

4. Someone, often a different volunteer, second-proofs the
e-text, removing the smaller errors.

5. The e-text is sent to Michael for posting.

There are three barriers which make it difficult for most people
to contribute:

1. Getting a PD book.

2. People without scanners and typing skills have no way of
turning a book into an e-text.

3. Even with a scanner, turning a book into an e-text is not
easy or quick.

Since, generally, people who have a PD book don't just want to
send it off to a stranger for scanning, the people who produce
e-texts have to get over all three of these barriers. This is
the bottleneck in production. It's relatively easy to get an
e-text second-proofed; making it in the first place is the
hardest part. You need to have a book, the means to turn it into
an e-text and the time and will to do it.

After that comes second proofing. There are two problems here.
One is that there may not be enough texts for all the people who
want to second-proof; the other is that a lot of beginners just
abandon texts given to them for second-proofing, which holds up
the process and is discouraging for others. So a lot of
volunteers do their own second-proofing or send their texts to
established contacts with a track record of finishing the job,
rather than making them available to newbies. The Directors of
Production do serve as contact points, and at any given moment
may have some texts for proofing, but they can only distribute
the texts that have already been made.

With that explanation out of the way, I can better address your
question of what you can do.

Second-proofing is an easy way to start, but material isn't just
waiting for you. If you want to look for some, post your offer
here and wait a week or so. If no takers by then, e-mail Michael
and ask if there are any texts available; he may be able to
refer you to a Director of Production who has something current.
You may not get an e-text immediately, but you will get one. Of
course, you can also look here for offers of e-texts ready to
proof.

Your other option is to take on a book yourself. In your case,
you already have a scanner, so you are equipped to become a
producer. You need to find a PD book.

Getting PD books means finding and borrowing or buying them. You
can do this through used bookshops, libraries or book sites on
the Internet. I mention a few net sites in the FAQ in the link
below. I get all my books through them, since they make it easy
for me to find the books I want. Prices range from $5 up to (in
my case) about $30.

The best advice I can offer here is: pick a book that you _want_
to contribute, and a book you'll enjoy working with--you'll be
living with it up close and personal for quite a while.

In March and April of 1999, Pietro created the PG Volunteers' WWWBoard and Greg Newby set up the mailing list gutvol-d, and, for the first time, volunteers who hadn't been introduced to each other by Michael or the Directors could meet online and communicate directly. A few FAQs and HOWTOs were written, covering the basics, the nitty-gritty of producing books. All of this activity made it much easier for people to get involved, and the Project experienced a new influx of interested volunteers. Improved OCR software was also a factor at this time: in response to the commoditization of scanners, there was rapid improvement in the quality of OCR, and better OCR made for easier production of e-texts. More work was shared out in co-operative proofing experiments.

It was in this new, expansive atmosphere, with ideas flooding in from enthusiasts newly energized by the project, that Charles Franks (Charlz) came up with the idea of a web site that would serve to distribute the work of proofing a book among many volunteers. But not only did he think of the concept; he went ahead and did it!

In April 2000, Charlz first requested comments on his idea in a post on the Volunteers' WWWBoard, and by the end of September, the first e-texts were queueing up on the production line.

On October 9th, Charlz wrote:

Number of pages proofed by date:

2nd 6
3rd 6
4th 20 <-- Newsletter
5th 27
6th 25
7th 29
8th 30
9th 45!! (and the day ain't over yet)

(The "Newsletter" is a reference to the site being mentioned in the PG Newsletter on October 4th, 2000).

Distributed Proofreaders, or DP, simply kept growing from there, as Charlz kept scanning and adding more books and features and proofers, and its simple organic growth produced 600 e-texts in two years, but when Charlz asked for more help on Slashdot, a popular technical news site, on November 8th, 2002, the response blew the roof off! The pages per day figure jumped from 1,000 to about 10,000 for a while, then settled down at its current 4,000. 4,000 pages, even given that each page is proofed twice, is a lot of pages. 2,000 produced pages per day is about five full books per day. DP has formed the backbone of PG's production ever since. Whatever the future of DP's production, its effect on shared knowledge and resources, and the communication and community it has built, ensures that Project Gutenberg will never be the same again.

I began writing this FAQ in March 2002, and was essentially finished around December 2002. It sat around, with a few tweaks here and there in response to comments, until the start of September 2003.

Today, it is a useful guide to Project Gutenberg norms and practices. By the time you read it, it may be ancient history ("Hey, Grandad, did you REALLY scan things from paper? Why didn't you use your brain implant?" :-) But it is one record of How Things Were in Project Gutenberg during this time of change.

jim September 7th, 2003.

Project Gutenberg FAQ 2002

I have a question not answered in this FAQ. How do I ask it?

If it's about how to produce a text, the Volunteers' Board at <https://www.gutenberg.org/vol/wwwboard/> is generally the best place to ask.

If it's a question of active interest to the general body of volunteers, you can ask it on the gutvol-d mailing list. See <https://www.gutenberg.org/subs.html> for joining it.

For other questions, you should check our Contact Information page at <https://www.gutenberg.org/contactinfo.html> and e-mail the appropriate person.

About Project Gutenberg:

G.1. What is Project Gutenberg? G.2. Where did Project Gutenberg come from? G.3. What has Project Gutenberg achieved? G.4. Who runs Project Gutenberg? G.5. How many people are in Project Gutenberg? G.6. How can I contact Project Gutenberg? G.7. How can I help Project Gutenberg? G.8. How can I keep in touch with what Project Gutenberg is doing? G.9. What is the relationship between Project Gutenberg, Projekt Gutenberg-DE, Project Gutenberg of Australia, and Project Runeberg?

About Project Gutenberg publications:

G.10. Does Project Gutenberg publish only books? G.11. What books does Project Gutenberg publish? G.12. What other things does Project Gutenberg publish? G.13. How does Project Gutenberg choose books to publish? G.14. What languages does Project Gutenberg publish in? G.15. Why don't you have any / many books about history, geography, science, G.16. Why don't you have any books by Steven King, Tom Clancy, Tolkien, etc.? G.17. Why is Project Gutenberg so set on using Plain Vanilla ASCII?

Readers' FAQ

About Finding eBooks:

R.1. How can I find an eBook I'm looking for? R.2. Can I get a complete list of Project Gutenberg eBooks? R.3. How can I download a PG text that hasn't been cataloged yet? R.4. You don't have the eBook I'm looking for. Can you help me find it? R.5. Where else can I go to get eBooks? R.6. I see some eBooks in several places on the Net. Do different people really re-create the same eBooks?

About Using the Web Site:

R.7. Why couldn't I reach your site? (or: Why is your site slow?) R.8. I get an error when I try to download a book. R.9. I searched for a book I know is in Project Gutenberg, but got no results. R.10. Can I copy your website, or your website materials? R.11. Your site doesn't look right in my browser. I clicked on a button, and nothing happened. R.12. What does that thing about "Select FTP Site" mean? R.13. What exactly is an FTP site anyway? R.14. Can I become an FTP mirror? R.15. Can I make a private FTP mirror for my school, library or organization? R.16. When I clicked on the file I want, nothing happened. R.17. How many texts are downloaded through the web site? R.18. What are the most popular books?

About Downloading and Using Project Gutenberg eBooks:

R.19. Should I download a ZIP or a TXT file? R.20. I've got a ZIP file. What do I do with it? R.21. I tried to unzip my file, but it said the file was corrupt, or damaged. R.22. I see gibberish onscreen when I click on a book. R.23. Can I download and read your books? R.24. What am I allowed to do with the books I download? R.25. Does Project Gutenberg know who downloads their books? R.26. I've found some obvious typos in a Project Gutenberg text. How should I report them? R.27. I've found some obvious typos in a Project Gutenberg text. Who should I report them to? R.28. I've reported some typos. What will happen next? R.29. I've got the text file, and I can read it, but it seems to be double-spaced or it has control characters like ^J or ^M at the end of every line. R.30. When I print out the text file, each line runs over the edge of the page and looks bad. R.31. I can read the text file, but a few characters appear as black squares, or gibberish. R.32. Can I get a handheld device for reading PG texts? Which device should I get? R.33. How can I read a PG eBook on my PDA (Palm, iPaq, Rocket . . .)

About the Files:

R.34. What types of files are there, and how do I read them? R.35. What do the filenames of the texts mean? R.36. What is the difference within PG between an "edition" and a "version"? R.37. What is the difference between an "etext" and an "eBook"? R.38. What are the "Etext/Ebook numbers" on the texts? R.39. What do the month and year on the text mean?

Copyright FAQ

C.1. What is copyright? C.2. Does copyright differ from country to country? From state to state? C.3. What are the copyright laws outside the U.S.? C.4. Why does Project Gutenberg advise only on U.S. copyright issues? C.5. I don't live in the U.S. Do these rules apply to me? C.6. What is the public domain? C.7. What can I do with a text that is in the public domain? C.8. How does a book enter the public domain? C.9. How does a copyright lapse? C.10. What books are in the public domain? C.11. My book says that it's "Copyright 1894". Is it in the public domain? C.12. How can a copyright owner release a work into the public domain? C.13. When is an author not the owner of a copyright on his or her works? C.14. What does Project Gutenberg mean by "eligible"? C.15. I have a manuscript from 1900. Is it eligible? C.16. How come my paper book of Shakespeare says it's "Copyright 1988"? C.17. What makes a "new copyright"? C.18. I have a 1990 book that I know was originally written in 1840, but the publisher is claiming a new copyright. What should I do? C.19. I have a 1990 reprint of an 1831 original. Is it eligible? C.20. I have a text that I know was based on a pre-1923 book, but I don't have the title page. Can I submit it to PG? C.21. How does Project Gutenberg "clear" books for copyright? C.22. I want to produce a particular book. Will it be copyright cleared? C.23. I have some extra material (images, introduction, preface, missing chapter) that should go into an existing PG text. Do I have to copyright-clear my edition before submitting it? C.24. I see some Project Gutenberg eBooks that are copyrighted. What's up with that? C.25. What are "non-renewed" books? C.26. How can I get Project Gutenberg to clear a non-renewed book?

Volunteers' FAQ

About the Basics:

V.1. How do I get started as a Project Gutenberg volunteer? V.2. What experience do I need to produce or proof a text? V.3. How do I produce a text? V.4. Do I need any special equipment? V.5. Do I need to be able to program? V.6. I am a programmer, and I would like to help by programming. V.7. What does a Gutenberg volunteer actually do? V.8. Can I produce a book in my own language? V.9. Does it have to be a book? Can I produce pieces from a magazine or other periodical? V.10. Do I _have_ to produce in plain ASCII text? V.11. Where do I sign up as a volunteer? V.12. How do PG volunteers communicate, keep in touch, or co-ordinate work? V.13. Where can I find a list of books that need proofing? V.14. Is there a list of books that Project Gutenberg wants? V.15. I have one book I'd like to contribute. Can I do just that without signing up?

About production:

V.16. How does a text get produced? V.17. How long must a text be to qualify for PG? V.18. What books are eligible? V.19. Are reprints or facsimiles eligible? V.20. What is the difference between a reprint and a facsimile? V.21. What is the difference between a reprint and a "new edition"? V.22. What book should I work on? V.23. I have a book in mind, but I don't have an eligible copy. V.24. Where can I find an eligible book? V.25. What is "TP&V"? V.26. What is "Posting"? V.27. I think I've found an eligible book that I'd like to work on. What do I do next? V.28. What books are currently being worked on? V.29. How do I find out if my book is already on-line somewhere? V.30. My book is not on the In-Progress list, and I can't find it on-line. V.31. My book is on-line, but not in Project Gutenberg. What should I do? V.32. My book is already on-line in Project Gutenberg, but my printed book is different from the version already archived. Can I add my version? V.33. I see a book that was being worked on three years ago. Is anyone still working on it? V.34. I've decided which book to produce. How do I tell PG I'm working on it? V.35. I have a two- or three-volume set. Should I submit them as one text, or one text for each volume? V.36. I have one physical book, with multiple works in it (like a collection of plays). Should I submit each text separately? V.37. How do I get copyright clearance? V.38. I have a two- or three-volume set. Do I have to get a separate clearance on each physical book? V.39. I have one physical book, with multiple works in it (like a collection of plays). Do I have to get a separate clearance for each work? V.40. Who will check up on my progress? When? V.41. How long should it take me to complete a book? V.42. I want/don't want my name published on my e-text V.43. I'd like to put a copy of my finished e-text, or another Gutenberg text, on my own web page. V.44. I've scanned, edited and proofed my text. How do I find someone to second-proof it? V.45. I've gone over and over my text. I can't find any more errors, and I'm sick of looking at it. What should I do now? V.46. Where and how can I send my text for posting? V.47. What is the "Credits Line"? V.48. How soon after I send it will my text be posted? V.49. I found a problem with my posted text. What do I do? V.50. Someone has e-mailed me about my posted text, pointing out errors. V.51. Someone has e-mailed me about my posted text, thanking me.

About Proofing:

V.52. What role does proofing play in Project Gutenberg? V.53. What is Distributed Proofing? V.54. What do I need to proof an e-text? V.55. Do I need to have a paper copy of the book I'm proofing? V.56. What's the difference between "first proof" and "second proof"? V.57. What do I do with an e-text sent to me for proofing? V.58. What kinds of errors will I have to correct? V.59. How long does it take to proof an e-text? V.60. Are there any special techniques for proofing? V.61. What actually happens during a proof?

About Net searching:

V.62. I've found an eligible text elsewhere on the Net, but it's not
in the PG archives. Can I just submit it to PG?
V.63. I've found an eligible text elsewhere on the Net, but it's not
in the PG archives. Why should I submit it to PG?
V.64. I have already scanned or typed a book; it's on my web site.
How can I get it included in the Gutenberg archives?
V.65. I have already scanned or typed a book; it's on my web site.
The world can already access it. Why should I add it to the
Gutenberg archives?
V.66. I have already scanned or typed a book, but it's not in plain text
format. Can I submit it to PG?

About author-submitted eBooks:

V.67. I've written a book. Will PG publish it? V.68. I have translated a classic book from one language to another. Will PG publish my translation? V.69. OK, this is one of the cases where PG will publish it. What do I do next? V.70. I hold the copyright on a book. Can I release it to the public domain? V.71. I hold the copyright on a book. Do I have to release the book into the public domain for Project Gutenberg to publish it? V.72. I hold the copyright on a book, and would like Project Gutenberg to publish it. Can I choose what rights to assign?

About what goes into the texts:

V.73. Why does PG format texts the way it does?

About the characters you use:

V.74. What characters can I use? V.75. What is ASCII? V.76. So what is ISO-8859? What is Codepage 437? What is Codepage 1252? What is MacRoman? V.77. What is Unicode? V.78. What is Big-5? V.79. What are "8-bit" and "7-bit" texts? V.80. I have an English text with some quotations from a language that needs accents--what should I do about the accents? V.81. I have some Greek quotations in my book. How can I handle them? V.82. I want to produce a book in a language like Spanish or French with accented characters. What should I do?

About the formatting of a text file:

V.83. How long should I make my lines of text? V.84. Why should I break lines at all? Why not make the text as one line per paragraph, and let the reader wrap it? V.85. Why use a CR/LF at end of line? V.86. One space or two at the end of a sentence? V.87. How do I indicate paragraphs? V.88. Should I indent the start of every paragraph? V.89. Are there any places where I should indent text? V.90. Can I use tabs (the TAB key) to indent? V.91. How should I treat dashes (hyphens) between words? V.92. How should I treat dashes replacing letters? V.93. What about hyphens at end of line? V.94. What should I do with italics? V.95. Yes, but I have a long passage of my book in italics! I can't really CAPITALIZE or _otherwise_ /mark/ all that text, can I? V.96. Should I capitalize the first word in each chapter? V.97. What is a Transcriber's Note? When should I add one? V.98. Should I keep page numbers in the e-text? V.99. In the exceptional cases where I keep page numbers, how should I format them? V.100. Should I keep Tables of Contents? V.101. Should I keep Indexes and Glossaries? V.102. How do I handle a break from one scene to another, where the book uses blank lines, or a row of asterisks? V.103. How should I treat footnotes? V.104. My book leaves a space before punctuation like semicolons, question marks, exclamation marks and quotes. Should I do the same? V.105. My book leaves a space in the middle of contracted words like "do n't", "we 'll" and "he 's". Should I do the same? V.106. How should I handle tables? V.107. How should I format letters or journal entries? V.108. What can I do with the British pound sign? V.109. What can I do with the degree symbol? V.110. How should I handle . . . ellipses? V.111. How should I handle chapter and section headings? V.112. My book has advertisements at the end. Should I keep them? V.113. Can I keep Lists of Illustrations, even when producing a plain text file? V.114. Can I include the captions of Illustrations, even when producing a plain text file? V.115. Can I include images with my text file?

About formatting poetry:

V.116. I'm producing a book of poetry. How should I format it? V.117. I'm producing a novel with some short quotations from poems.

About formatting plays:

V.118. How should I format Act and Scene headings? V.119. How should I format stage directions? V.120. How should I format blank verse?

About some typical formatting issues:

V.121. Sample 1: Typical formatting issues of a novel. V.122. Sample 2: Typical formatting issues of non-fiction V.123. Sample 3: Typical formatting issues of poetry V.124. Sample 4: Typical formatting issues of plays

About problems with the printed books:

V.125. I found some distasteful or offensive passages in a book I'm
producing. Should I omit them?
V.126. Some paragraphs in my book, where a character is speaking,
have quotes at the start, but not at the end. Should I close
those quotes?
V.127. The spelling in my book is British English (colour, centre).
Should I change these to American spellings?
V.128. I'm nearly sure that some words in my printed book are typos.
Should I change them?
V.129. Having investigated what looks like a typo, I find it isn't.
Do I need to do anything?
V.130. Aarrgh! Some pages are missing! Do I have to abandon the book?
V.131. Some words are spelled inconsistently in my book (e.g. sometimes
"surprise", sometimes "surprize"). Should I make them consistent?

Word Processing FAQ

W.1. What's the difference between an editor and a word processor? W.2. Should I use an editor or a word processor? W.3. Which editor or word processor should I use? W.4. How can I make my word processor easier to work with for plain text? W.5. What is the difference between proportional and non-proportional fonts? W.6. I can't get words in a table or poem to line up under each other.

About using MS-Word:

W.7. I've edited my book in Word - how do I save it as plain text? W.8. Quotes look wrong when I save a Word document as plain text. W.9. Dashes look wrong when I save a Word document as plain text. W.10. I saved my Word document as HTML, but the HTML looks terrible.

Scanning FAQ

S.1. What is a scanner? S.2. What types of scanners are there? S.3. Which scanner should I get? S.4. What is ADF? S.5. Should I get ADF? S.6. What's a "TWAIN driver" and why do I need one? S.7. How do I scan a book? S.8. My book won't open flat enough for a good scan, and I don't want to cut the pages. S.9. How long does it take to scan a book? S.10. What scanner settings are best? S.11. Can I use a digital camera in place of a scanner? S.12. What is OCR? S.13. What differences are there between OCR packages? S.14. How accurate should OCR be? S.15. Which OCR package should I get? S.16. What types of mistakes do OCR packages typically make? S.17. Why am I getting a lot of mistakes in my OCRed text? S.18. I got an OCR package bundled with my scanner. Is it good enough to use? S.19. I want to include some images with a HTML version. How should I scan them? S.20. I want to include some images with a HTML version. What type of image should I use? S.21. Will PG store scanned page images of my book?

HTML FAQ

H.1. Can I submit a HTML version of my text? H.2. Why should I make a HTML version? H.3. Can I submit a HTML version without a plain ASCII version? H.4. What are the PG rules for HTML texts? H.5. Can I use Javascript or other scripting languages in my HTML? H.6. Should I make my HTML edition all on one page, or split it into multiple linked pages? H.7. How can I check that I haven't made mistakes in coding my HTML? H.8. Can I submit a HTML or other format of somebody else's text? H.9. How big can the images be in a HTML file? H.10. The images I've scanned are too big for inclusion in HTML. What can I do about it? H.11. Can I include decorative images I've made or found? H.12. How can I make a plain text version from a HTML file? H.13. How can I make a HTML version from my plain text file?

Programs and Programming FAQ

P.1. What useful programs are available for Project Gutenberg work? P.2. What programs could I write to help with PG work?

Formats FAQ

F.1. What formats does Project Gutenberg publish? F.2. What is, and how do I make or use various formats?

Volunteers' Voices - Volunteers talk about PG

Amy Zelmer
Ben Crowder
Col Choat
Dagny
Gardner Buchanan
Jim Tinsley
John Mamoun
Ken Reeder
Lynn Hill
Sandra Laythorpe
Tony Adam
Tonya Allen
Walter Debeuf

Bookmarks - web pages commonly referred to in the FAQ

B.1. Project Gutenberg B.2. Distributed Proofing Sites B.3. Other On-Line eBook Pages B.4. Lists of Suggested Books to Transcribe B.5. Finding Paper Books On-Line

About Project Gutenberg:

G.1. What is Project Gutenberg?

Project Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize, archive, and distribute cultural works.

G.2. Where did Project Gutenberg come from?

In 1971, Michael Hart was given $100,000,000 worth of computer time on a mainframe of the era. Trying to figure out how to put these very expensive hours to good use, he envisaged a time when there would be millions of connected computers, and typed in the Declaration of Independence (all in upper case--there was no lower case available!). His idea was that everybody who had access to a computer could have a copy of the text. Now, 31 years later, his copy of the Declaration of Independence (with lower-case added!) is still available to everyone on the Internet.

During the 70s, he added some more classic American texts, and through the 80s worked on the Bible and the collected works of Shakespeare. That edition of Shakespeare was never released, due to copyright law changes, but others followed.

Starting in 1991, Project Gutenberg began to take its current form, with many different texts and defined targets. The target for 1991 was one book a month. 1992's target was two books a month. This target doubled every year through 1996, when it hit 32 books a month.

Today, we have a target of 200 books a month.

G.3. What has Project Gutenberg achieved?

Project Gutenberg is the original, and oldest, etext project on the Internet, founded in 1971.

In mid-2002, we are not only still going, we have made over 5,000 eBooks available, with a current production target of 200 more each month.

We have many mirrors (copies) of our archives on all five continents.

G.4. Who runs Project Gutenberg?

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3) organization. Dr. Gregory B. Newby <[email protected]> is our volunteer CEO. Professor Michael Hart <[email protected]> is our Founder and Executive Director.

In terms of the day-to-day production of eBooks, our volunteers run themselves. :-) They produce books, and submit them when completed. Our Production Directors help with general volunteer issues. The Posting Team check submitted texts and shepherd them onto our servers. You can find current contact information for these people on the Contact Information page at <https://www.gutenberg.org/contactinfo.html>.

G.5. How many people are in Project Gutenberg?

As of mid-2002, there are about 100 active producers, and 200 regular, active helpers doing tasks like proofing. Something like 1500 people receive our Newsletter.

G.6. How can I contact Project Gutenberg?

There are lots of ways to contact us, depending on what you want to talk about. The Contact Info page <https://www.gutenberg.org/contactinfo.html> on the main web site lists them.

G.7. How can I help Project Gutenberg?

Donate money! We're an all-volunteer project, and we don't have much to spend, so even a little goes a long way. Our Donation page <https://www.gutenberg.org/donation.html> tells you how.

Produce a text! Turn an old book into an immortal etext. The Volunteers' FAQ [V.1] tells you how.

G.8. How can I keep in touch with what Project Gutenberg is doing?

Subscribe to one of the Newsletters--weekly or monthly!

The page <https://www.gutenberg.org/subs.html> gives details of how to subscribe, unsubscribe and access the archives.

G.9. What is the relationship between Project Gutenberg, Projekt
Gutenberg-DE, Project Gutenberg of Australia, and Project Runeberg?

These are all entirely separate organizations. Projekt Gutenberg-DE and Project Gutenberg of Australia use the "Project Gutenberg" trademark with permission, and they operate within the copyright rules of their respective countries. Project Runeberg has no specific connection with Project Gutenberg.

About Project Gutenberg publications:

G.10. Does Project Gutenberg publish only books?

No.

Project Gutenberg also publishes other cultural works like movies and music, but the bulk of our collection is books.

G.11. What books does Project Gutenberg publish?

Any books that we legally can, and that our volunteers want to work on.

We cannot publish any texts still in copyright without permission. This generally means that our texts are taken from books published pre-1923. (It's more complicated than that, as our Copyright FAQ explains, but 1923 is a good first rule-of-thumb for the U.S.A.)

So you won't find the latest bestsellers or modern computer books here. You _will_ find the classic books from the start of this century and previous centuries, from authors like Shakespeare, Poe, Dante, as well as well-loved favorites like the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the Tarzan and Mars books of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Alice's adventures in Wonderland as told by Lewis Carroll, and thousands of others.

These books are chosen by our volunteers. Simply, a volunteer decides that a certain book should be in the archives, obtains the book and does the work necessary to turn it into an e-text. If you're interested in volunteering, see the Volunteers' FAQ at [V.1] below.

G.12. What other things does Project Gutenberg publish?

We have published some music files, in MIDI and MUS formats. We have published the Human Genome. We have published pictures of the prehistoric cave paintings from the south of France. We have published some video files and some audio files, including a Janis Ian track and readings from public domain books.

G.13. How does Project Gutenberg choose books to publish?

Project Gutenberg, as such, does not choose books to publish. There is no central list of works that volunteers are asked to work on. Individual volunteers choose and produce books according to their own tastes and values, and the availability (or price!) of the book.

G.14. What languages does Project Gutenberg publish in?

Whatever languages we can! As above, this is decided by what languages our volunteers choose to work with.

G.15. Why don't you have any / many books about history, geography,
science, biography, etc.?
Why aren't there any / more PG books available in French, Spanish,
German, etc.?

If we can legally publish a book, and it isn't in the archives, it's because no volunteer has produced it yet. At the moment, we have a predominance of English language novels because that is what most people have chosen to work on.

We're always looking for new languages and topics, and always delighted to see people producing them. If we don't have enough of the types of books you would like to see, why don't you help us out by contributing one? If the people interested in a particular area don't contribute, we'll always be short in that area.

G.16. Why don't you have any books by Steven King, Tom Clancy,
Tolkien, etc.?

Project Gutenberg can publish only books that are in the public domain [C.10] unless we have the permission of the copyright holder. Current bestsellers have not yet entered the public domain, and we're not likely to get permission from the authors to publish them.

G.17. Why is Project Gutenberg so set on using Plain Vanilla ASCII?

Don't misrepresent us--we support and publish many open formats, but, yes, we do want to have a plain text version of everything possible.

We're looking at our history, and we're planning for the long term--the _very_ long term.

Today, Plain Vanilla ASCII can be read, written, copied and printed by just about every simple text editor on every computer in the world. This has been so for over thirty years, and is likely to be so for the foreseeable future. We've seen formats and extended character sets come and go; plain text stays with us. We can still read Shakespeare's First Folios, the original Gutenberg Bible, the Domesday Book, and even the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Rosetta Stone (though we may have trouble with the language!), but we can't read many files made in various formats on computer media just 20 years ago.

We're trying to build an archive that will last not only decades, but _centuries_.

The point of putting works in the PG archive is that they are copied to many, many public sites and individual computers all over the world. No single disaster can destroy them; no single government can suppress them. Long after we're all dead and gone, when the very concept of an ISP is as quaint as gas streetlamps, when HTML reads like Middle English, those texts will still be safe, copied, and available to our descendants.

The PG archive is so valuable, yet free and easily portable, that even if every current PG volunteer vanished overnight, people around the world would copy and preserve it.

If the ZIP format loses popularity, and is replaced by better compression, it will be easy to convert the zip formats automatically (and we post all plain-text files in unzipped format as well). If hard drives are replaced by optical memory, it will be easy to copy the files onto that. If even ASCII is superseded by Unicode or one of its descendants, it will be possible for our grandchildren to convert it automatically (and ASCII is included in Unicode anyway).

By contrast, many of us have files saved in proprietary formats from word-processors only 5 or 10 years old that are already impractical for us to read. Some of our files produced just a few years ago using non-ASCII character sets like Codepage 850 are already giving problems for some readers. Some eBook reader formats launched within the last few years are already obsolete. We have learned from that experience.

We also encourage other open formats based on plain text, like HTML and XML, and even occasionally not-so-open ones when simple formatting isn't enough, but plain text and ASCII is the only format and character set we're sure of in a rapidly-changing technological landscape.

Please see also the FAQ [F.1] "What formats does Project Gutenberg publish?" for more detailed discussion of formats.

Readers' FAQ

About Finding eBooks:

R.1. How can I find an eBook I'm looking for?

For PG books, the simplest way is to go to the home page at <https://www.gutenberg.org>, type the Author or Title into the search form, press the "Search" button, and follow the choices.

As of late 2002, there is a full-text search available at <http://public.ibiblio.org/gsdl/cgi-bin/library.cgi> where you can search not only for titles and authors, but any words or phrases you want to look up. For example, entering "Ample make this bed" and running an "entire books" search for all words leads you to Poems Of Emily Dickinson, Series Two.

R.2. Can I get a complete list of Project Gutenberg eBooks?

Yes. There are two main options:

GUTINDEX.ALL is the raw list of files posted. You will find it at: <ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/GUTINDEX.ALL>

PGWHOLE.TXT is the list of files cataloged. A Zipped version is: <http://promo.net/gg/pgwhole.zip>

When we post a book, the posting information contains title and author, eBook number, base filename and schedule year and month. This raw information goes into GUTINDEX.ALL.

After posting, our catalogers get to work and add more information --things like full title, subtitle, author birth and death dates, Library of Congress Classification, full filenames and sizes. When a book has been cataloged, it is entered onto the website database so that you can search for it. PGWHOLE.TXT is a summary of the books in the website database.

People who want to bypass the search on the website and find books themselves will probably want to use GUTINDEX.ALL, since it doesn't wait for the cataloging.

R.3. How can I download a PG text that hasn't been cataloged yet?

In short, just browse to:

<http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/>

choose the schedule year of the text (newly-posted texts will usually be in the latest year) and look down the list to find the filename you're looking for.

In general, you need to know:

a) the address of an FTP site b) the schedule year of the text you want c) the basename of the text you want.

The fastest and safest FTP site to use for this is ftp.ibiblio.org, which is the first of our two primary posting sites (the other being ftp.archive.org). We post to these two sites, and then other sites copy from them at intervals, so with any FTP sites other than these two, the file may not be available immediately.

You can get the schedule year and basename of the text from its line in GUTINDEX.ALL. Let's take an example. The file

Mar 2004 The Herd Boy and His Hermit, by C. M. Yonge [#32][hrdbhxxx.xxx]5313

has been posted just a few hours ago as I write this. From the GUTINDEX entry, the schedule year is 2004, and the basename of the text is hrdbh.

We divide our texts into directories (folders) based on the schedule year, so this eBook will be in the directory for 2004, which will be named something ending in /etext04. All the directories are named etext plus the last two digits of the year. (Somebody's going to have to change that convention in about 87 years from now! :-) We currently have directories starting at 90, running through the 90s and then 00, 01, 02, 03, 04. All eBooks produced before 1991 are in the /etext90 directory, so if you're looking for

Dec 1971 Declaration of Independence [whenxxxx.xxx] 1 or Aug 1989 The Bible, Both Testaments, King James Version [kjv10xxx.xxx] 10

you should look in /etext90.

As it happens, ibiblio supports both HTTP (web) and FTP access to the text, so we can just browse to

<http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/>

and choose the 2004 directory from there.

If you want to automate this, you could also use the more direct address

<ftp://www.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext04/>

The equivalent address for ftp.archive.org is

<ftp://ftp.archive.org/pub/etext/etext04/>

Either way, we see a long page of files, in alphabetical order. Scroll down to the "H"s and look for hrdbh. We see four files with this basename:

hrdbh10.txt hrdbh10.zip hrdbh10h.htm hrdbh10h.zip

This means that both plain text and HTML formats are available, and you can choose to download them either zipped or uncompressed. For more detail about conventions for filenames, see the FAQ "What do the filenames of the texts mean?" [R.35]. The main thing you need to know is that any file beginning with hrdbh is some format or edition of this book.

Finally, all you have to do is click on the format you want to download.

R.4. You don't have the eBook I'm looking for. Can you help me find it?

Sorry, no. We can suggest (see below) some other places to look for publicly accessible books on the Net, but we can't do the search for you.

R.5. Where else can I go to get eBooks?

The On-Line Books Page <http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/> and the Internet Public Library at <http://www.ipl.org/> are two sites that specialize in creating a list of all books on-line from any source. Searching them is a good place to start.

If you're looking for commercial books, like current textbooks or bestsellers, you're not likely to find them here, since recent books are not in the public domain. For these, you should look for commercial booksellers on the Net--any search engine will direct you to some if you enter search terms like "shop ebook".

R.6. I see some eBooks in several places on the Net. Do different
people really re-create the same eBooks?

It does happen, but mostly by accident. Anyone experienced in eBook creation will first search the usual places to see whether anyone else has already transcribed the book they're interested in. If it has been transcribed, they will not duplicate the effort.

Etexts that are in the public domain very often float around the Net for years--stored in a gopher server here, posted to Usenet there, held on someone's local computer for a year or two and then reformatted as HTML and uploaded to a web site somewhere else. And this is good, because we want texts to be copied as widely as possible.

Public domain eBooks are fair game for anyone to copy, correct, mark up, package and post: that's what being in the public domain means.

Project Gutenberg eBooks are often quickly copied and reformatted, and posted on other sites like Blackmask at <http://www.blackmask.com>.

If you find an eBook in many different places, the odds are good that it came from one original source, and was copied around.

It does sometimes happen that people duplicate the transcription of books already made into text. Sometimes it's because they didn't find the version already made. Sometimes they have a different edition, and want to transcribe that. Mostly, though, we all try not to do more work than we have to.

About Using the Web Site:

R.7. Why couldn't I reach your site? (or: Why is your site slow?)

This isn't common, but it happens. Project Gutenberg is a very busy site, probably one of the busiest non-commercial sites on the Web, and sometimes the amount of traffic causes a slowdown.

There may also be a bottleneck somewhere else between you and the site. If at first you don't succeed, _don't tell us_, just try, try again. The correct address is either:

http://promo.net/pg/ or https://www.gutenberg.org/

R.8. I get an error when I try to download a book.

We do not keep e-text files on this site. Instead, many FTP sites throughout the world hold the whole Project Gutenberg archive of texts. An FTP site is just a computer on the Internet that specializes in holding files for download and sending them to people on request. You can find a list of FTP sites that hold Gutenberg texts at <https://www.gutenberg.org/list.html>.

When you're searching or browsing for titles and authors, you're on this Project Gutenberg site, but when you click on the book to download it, you are connected to an FTP site. At the time you click on the filename, your browser contacts an FTP site and tries to download the file from there. If you get an error, it could be because the FTP site is busy, or because there's a network traffic bottleneck between you and that FTP site, or because the text you're looking for is missing from that FTP site.

Usually, the easiest solution is to choose another FTP site to download your text from. Go to the Search page, choose a different FTP site, and search again for your text.

Tip: You should always try to choose the FTP site closest to you. Not only are you helping to minimize Net traffic by choosing a nearby site, but your file will download faster!

If all else fails, note the year and the filename of the book you want, choose an FTP site from this list and click on one of them. Then browse your way through the listings to the file you want.

For example, if you find "Lady Susan" by Jane Austen, you will see that it was published by Gutenberg in 1997, and its filename is lsusn10.txt, so browse to one of the FTP sites, choose the directory called etext97 and click (or right-click and Save, depending on your browser) on the file lsusn10.txt.

R.9. I searched for a book I know is in Project Gutenberg, but got no
results.

First go to the Advanced Search page. Sometimes you may miss in searching because of alternative spellings, so try searching separately using just one word in Author or Title. Read the Search Tips.

If that fails, you can Browse through the site catalog. Let's say you're looking for "The Wandering Jew" by Eugene Sue.

Go to the PG Home page: <https://www.gutenberg.org/>

Once on this page, click on: "Browse" in "Browse by Author or Title"

You are then brought to a new page, asking you to select an "FTP site". Further details on how and why to choose an "FTP Site" are available on this page.

Select an FTP Site from the Selection List available at the bottom of the page, then click on "Select".

You get a new page, Click on "S", initial for "Sue, Eugene"

You should now see a list of all of the Authors whose Last name starts with "S". Scroll down till you find the direct links to the Sue, Eugene works.

Click on the work you are interested to, then click on the file link found on the page you were brought to, Etext Card ID -3987- when selecting the work, as immediately above.

On this page, above the teaser, there are two working links:

DOWNLOAD:
· es12v10.txt - 2.95 MB
· es12v10.zip - 1.10 MB

Click on the link of your choice in order to get the book.

If you can't find your text either way, the book has not been cataloged. The site catalog always lags behind the postings, since we need to collect extra information about the book and the author before it goes into the full catalog. If you know that the book has been posted recently, and maybe hasn't made it into the catalog yet, read the FAQ "How can I download a PG text that hasn't been cataloged yet?"

If even this doesn't help, don't despair! We don't have it, but it may be elsewhere on the Web. Go to the major search engines and try there. You can also try looking in the Book Search section of The On-Line Books Page <http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/> or the Internet Public Library <http://www.ipl.org>, and if you have no luck with that, you might be able to find it listed as being In Progress somewhere on their Books In Progress and Requested page at <http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/in-progress.html>.

R.10. Can I copy your website, or your website materials?

No.

Keeping the PG site updated with the latest e-text releases is an ongoing job, and our experience is that people, however well-intentioned, do not keep copies up to date. We want there to be one clear source for people seeking the latest Project Gutenberg information, and we think that having a lot of out-of-date copies and partial copies scattered around the net would be a bad thing.

We welcome mirrors and copies of our e-texts, in new FTP sites [R.14], but the main web site itself is copyrighted and may not be copied.

R.11. Your site doesn't look right in my browser.
I clicked on a button, and nothing happened.

We take a lot of trouble to ensure that our website uses only valid, standard HTML, and we're not even slightly tempted to use glitzy features that look good in one browser but don't work in another, so we can promise you that our site is not the problem.

The site uses Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), a W3C standard since 1996. Some older browsers have a buggy implementation of CSS, and this can cause some things to appear off-kilter. If your browser is even older, or doesn't know about CSS at all (as in the case of Lynx, for example) it should have no problem.

If you actually clicked on a button, like the Search button or the Post button on the Volunteers' Web Board page, and nothing happened, you might be behind a proxy or web filter that doesn't like you making POST requests. If you have a web filter switched on, turn it off, reload the page and try again.

R.12. What does that thing about "Select FTP Site" mean?