Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter

The Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter, Oct. 21, 2008
eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since 1971

You may not have received this on time, due to problems
with the mailer program, and/or you might receive extra
copies, as I am trying alternative routes and CEO Newby
may also try to send this out.  My apologies.  mh


50 Months to The End of the World Via Mayan Calendaring
on December 21, 2012 [some now saying October 11, 2011]

This leaves 4 1/4 years, 17 seasons, or 50 months.

Not to worry.  I will still make predictions further on.



New Project Gutenberg Landmarks


We just passed 200 books in Spanish at:

http://www.gutenberg.org

and there are more at:

http://www.gutenberg.cc




Grand Total of About 30,000 Books made by Project Gutenberg



30,000 eBooks:  About The Same As Average Public Libraries!

We are rapidly approaching 30,000 eBooks in the originating
Project Gutenberg collections, as differentiated from those
eBooks originating with other eBook producers located at an
alternate site to the original http://www.gutenberg.org, at
http://www.gutenberg.cc which has over 75,000 eBooks.

We should pass 30,000 before the end of the year, as below.



Please note that PrePrints now has over 2,000 eBooks!!!



Chinese Moves Into The Project Gutenberg "Top 5"


As you will notice in the language list below, Chinese will
apparently be moving up to our 4th place language, counting
non-English eBooks.

We still need more help in cataloging these eBooks, but the
latest 300 or so Chinese eBooks are now in PrePrints.

Anyone who can work in Chinese is encouraged to look into a
directory called /china in PrePrints, or get the .zip file,
from one directory above to get all the files downloaded in
one single command.

http://preprints.readingroo.ms

first one on the list:

/china

.zip of whole bunch is one directory up, get china.zip

The current list, NOT counting the new 307 PrePrints:

Grand total for today: 26867 [Yesterday, mail problems]

22863   English en
1289    French  fr
549     German  de
470     Finnish fi
359     Dutch   nl
344     Chinese zh
260     Portuguese      pt
207     Spanish es
159     Italian it


When we get all 307 possible titles online, that will bring
Chinese up to a total of 666, which will place it second of
our non-English languages collection which is approximately
where it should go, given Internet language dispersal.

Please note that even without counting these 307, a Chinese
eBook total is already approaching that of Dutch, which has
been in our Top 5 for years.

The times are changing, and we can either lead or follow.

Believe it or not, Spanish is listed as the third language,
with regard to its use on the entire Internet so that's the 

next goal, to bring Spanish to out Top 5.

In reference to that goal, I am giving a presentation for a
new combination of Internet efforts called "Both Americas,"
in Buenos Aires early next Spring, followed by what I would
hope will be a similar conference in France.  India has had
one or more problems with getting an actual invitation sent
to me, and since their current conference will be over less
than a month from now, I will not be able to attend even if
such an invitation is issue at the last moment unless it is
of such an unusual nature that I can't turn it down and may
have to interrupt another trip I have now scheduled during,
and including the same period, the coming month.

This is the second time a conference hosted by people I had
contact with in India has not worked out due to inabilities
to get things organized in a manner that does not cost me a
great deal of time and money, neither of which I have great
amounts of to invest in any but the wisest of manners.

I fear the conference in France may be headed the direction
it was headed in last year, much as did the other one I had
mentioned above, but right now I can't say for sure that it
is either going to actually happen, or that I may speak.

Something I should mention about possible conferences:

If all the plans are not made, tickets purchased, arranged,
etc., so that I can at least expect to break even on trips,
at least one month in advance, the odds of my attending the
conference fall very rapidly to zero.  So far the only ones
keeping up their end of the bargain are the "Both Americas"
hosting the conference in Buenos Aires, so that appears the
only conference I am certain to attend in six months.

Greg Newby and I have made an attempt to set up one of few,
very few, conference appearances with a joint presentation,
but we haven't heard a word back from that one either, so I
won't even mention it at the moment.

Project Gutenberg just doesn't have the money for us to get
to conferences where we would lose money in the process.




Our All Time Hottest Requests!!!!!!!



FLASH RAM


I am looking for the earliest flash RAM possible.

The very earliest were PCMCIA cards, such as used for the
Poqet computer, etc.

The earliest USB flash drives were Disgo/Dizgo, M-Systems
and these were OEMed by IBM, HP, etc. They are particular
in a recognizable fashion because their snapon connectors
resemble the connectors of jigsaw puzzles.




POWERPOINT


We need someone who can do PowerPoint illustrations.

One in particular, building a 3-D box of 1,000 dominoes.


///


Additional Newsletter Services


In addition, we will provide the PG Canada Newsletter and
totals from PG of Australia, Europe, PrePrints, etc.

You should notice that we had a very good month, with 100
books done nearly every single week.


These totals do NOT include 75,000+ at:

http://www.gutenberg.cc

Where there are eBooks representing over 100 languages.



These are the various totals from the ~30,000 at:

http://www.gutenberg.org

and our other Project Gutenberg Sites

[Yesterday's message, no mail coming in right now,
but if I send this two different ways, I think ONE
of them will get to you.]


      day       | cnt 
----------------+-----
 Mon 2008-10-13 |   8
 Tue 2008-10-14 |  12
 Wed 2008-10-15 |   4
 Thu 2008-10-16 |   9
 Fri 2008-10-17 |   5
 Sat 2008-10-18 |  16
 Sun 2008-10-19 |  10

Thanks to Marcello Perathoner!



Here are the current language totals
for languages with over 100 eBooks.
[Again, from yesterday]

Grand total for today: 26,867 [ - 26570 =] +297

22,863 [ - 22,670 =] + 193     English en
 1,289 [ -  1,243 =] +  46     French  fr
   549 [ -    542 =] +   7     German  de
   470 [ -    464 =] +   6     Finnish fi
   359 [ -    357 =] +   2     Dutch   nl
   359 [ -    320 =] +  39     Chinese zh  [+307 PP]
   260 [ -    253 =] +   7     Portuguese pt
   207 [ -    202 =] +   5     Spanish es
   159 [ -    155 =] +   4     Italian it

etc.,etc.,etc.

Total increase       + 297     All Reported Lanugages


Thanks to Greg Newby!


And From Project Gutenberg Sites Worldwide


26,867  +   297  10/20/08  PG General Automated Count
 1,706  +    14  10/20/08  PG Australia
   530  +     7  10/20/08  PG Europe
 2,461  + 1,777  10/20/08  PG PrePrints
   177  +    13  09/30/08  PG Canada
======
31,741  + 2,108  by various automated counts and newsletters

Note:  Without counting PrePrints, we are still under 30K,
and some of the new .lit collection will not make it under
our current rules of addition from PrePrints, and would be
deleted from PrePrints without moving to other listings.

Note:  There are perhaps 100 eBooks not listed here
that are already in circulation from Project Gutenberg.

Note:  PG Canada includes English, French, and Italian.


///


Here is how we ended 2007

The combined PG projects had produced a total of 26,161 

titles.


The most number of books posted...
 ...in one day was 65 on the 26th December
 ...in one week was 151 in Week 18 (week ending 9th May)
 ...in one month was 477 in November

We averaged 
338 per month [Over 4,000 for the year]
 78 per week
 11.13 per day

99 titles were newly REposted to the new filing system, 

bringing us almost to the 2,000 mark.


Here is a small selection of project milestones;

TOTAL "Original Project Gutenberg eBooks" equals about
the number of books in the average U.S. public library

 * 31,500 on 2008/10/21 [not an error, 1,777 PrePrints]
 * 30,000 on 2008/10/21
 * 29,500 on 2008/09/19
 * 29,000 ~~ Calculating
 * 28,500 ~~ Calculating
 * 28,000 ~~ 2008/05/16
 * 27,500 on 2008/04/05
 * 27,000 ~~ 2008/02/29
 * 26,500 on 2008/01/26
 * 26,000 on 2007/12/24
 * 25,000 on 2007/10/12
 * 24,000 on 2007/07/10
 * 23,000 on 2007/04/15

PG-AU
 * 1,700 on 2008/10/10
 * 1,600 on 2008/02/08
 * 1,500 on 2007/04/07

PG Canada
 * 175 on 2008/09/30
 * 100 on 2008/03/25
 * 110 on 2008/04/17



y
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