The Project Gutenberg Year In Review of January 7, 2009

The Project Gutenberg Year In Review of January 7, 2009

eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since 1971


As many of you are aware, the Project Gutenberg year is
from noon of the first Wednesday of a year to the next.

Thus, I have to wait until noon today to get the finals
of our various categories, though some will not be here
in time, due to the normal delays, and will be marked.




New Project Gutenberg Landmarks and Headlines



The Complete "CIA World Factbooks"


The latest project to be completed, just last night, as
a matter of fact, is "The CIA Factbook," complete, from
1990 to 2008.  It has been many years of hunting to get
all the years, and even more to reformat the files from
their originals to something easier to search.

2008, since it is still officially in flux until July 1
or thereabouts, is still in PrePrints:

http://www.preprints.readingroo.ms/factbook2008

On July 1, the new 2009 edition will be authorized, but
it usually doesn't appear until Aug, Sep, or even Oct.

If any of you would like to keep an eye out for it, I'd
greatly appreciate it, as it sometimes appeared without
any real announcements, and we'd like to get it up with
as little delay as possible.

Also, if anyone can located any pre-1990 editions, that
would also be greatly appreciated.




Project Gutenberg Is Now A Firefox Plugin


If you look through the provided list of search engines
that appear in the upper right hand of [my] Firefox you
may note that along with Google, Merriam-Webster, and a
handful of others, you'll find Project Gutenberg with a
place in that list of great places to search.




Chinese Moves Into Our Top 5 List


As has been noted in our recent Monthly Newsletters, we
have finally managed to do nearly 400 eBooks in Chinese
and to start to do justice to the most spoken language.

Note:  The collection of 307 Chinese Preprints eBooks I
mentioned in earlier Newsletters, has been "retired."

This means we are no longer sure they will be done, for
lack of copyright research, etc.  They are still there,
waiting, if you would care to see if you can bring even
just a few of them, into general circulation.


Statistical Note:  I am counting the 307 in the totals,
for 2008, but not 2009, since they appeared from all of
the year ending a week ago.  There is a method to these
madnesses, and that is that if I officially removed the
307, I would have to move in a couple thousand that are
waiting in the wings, and we prefer to balance the year
2008 with 2009 as well as possible.  So by eliminating,
as it were, 307 between the official years, 2009 should
still come out well ahead due to the new thousands that
will be put in PrePrints as soon as possible.




Spanish Is Our New Goal for Entry Into the Top 5 List


I desperately need some Spanish speaking people to help me!

This project is somewhat on hold, as the sponsor are still,
as we speak, on their holiday vacations.


Note:  You can find many more books in other languages at:

http://www.gutenberg.cc

where there are over 75,000 books, half in other languages.





Project Gutenberg Books Equal The Average Library



We also officially passed 32,000 original Project Gutenberg
eBooks this past year, including all our usual listings.

This means the original Project Gutenberg editions now list
as many book titles as the average U.S. public library.


Reminder:

The difference between


http://www.gutenberg.org

and

http://www.gutenberg.cc


is that most of the books at gutenberg.org are put through
a rigorous internal screening, proofreading and formatting
before they are ever entered into our catalog, as WE would
be responsible for correcting any errors.

The books at gutenberg.cc have been donated by other eBook
producers and eLibraries around the world, hundreds of the
world's best collections are represented.  However, eBooks
at gutenberg.cc are the responsibility of the donors so we
can't fix the errors without their permission, or else our
edition differs from theirs.  So usually we have to wait a
while as they make various updates and corrections.




Project Gutenberg PrePrints



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

Well worth looking into:

http://www.preprints.readingroo.ms


We could use someone to write a piece about PrePrints.


The books in PrePrints are usually waiting for some final,
necessary, "missing piece" of information before complete,
and ready to be entered into our permanent catalog.

However, we don't want to deprive the general readership's
access to these books just on a technicality, one which is
sometimes going to take years to resolve, so we put them a
stone's throw away from our original collection, with some
words of warning.



The News In More Detail



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


If we don't lead in the field of Chinese eBooks we follow--
and we are starting a Project Gutenberg of Chinese, for all
who may wish to get in on the ground floor.

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.


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



FLASH RAM


I am still looking for the earliest flash RAM possible.

The very earliest were PCMCIA cards, such as used for the
Poqet computer, etc.  One of these for an HP is coming.

The earliest USB flash drives were DisgoDizgo, 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.

And in other languages.



Additional Newsletter Services


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




The 2008 Statistical Year in Review



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




PrePrints

2431 [Counting the 307 Chinese eBooks]
      [and 111 more as retired/promoted/published]

2009 will start without these 307 as follows:

2013 titles (approximately)
(448 other titles have been
retired/promoted/published,
and will be listed as such,
starting next Newsletter.)

2008 CIA World Factbook. The editions prior to 2008 are
already in the main collection but the 2008 edition is
subject to change until mid-2008. We have the current
edition copied here, until then, as both a large .zip
(49MB) and unpacked. Added January 6, 2009.


1,726   Project Gutenberg of Australia
   554   Project Gutenberg of Europe
   225   Project Gutenberg of Canada [Estimated]
         [202 up to December, no current report]
2,320   PrePrints [Counting the 307 Chinese eBooks]


Grand total for today: 27,616


23,374      English    en
  1,343      French     fr
    557      German     de
    482      Finnish    fi
    395      Chinese    zh
    380      Dutch      nl
    292      Portuguese pt
    219      Spanish    es
    174      Italian    it
     62      Latin      la
     55      Esperanto  eo
     54      Tagalog    tl
     50      Swedish    sv


We now have just over a dozen languages with over 50.



>From Project Gutenberg Sites Worldwide


27,616   PG General Automated Count
  1,726   Project Gutenberg of Australia
    554   Project Gutenberg of Europe
    225   Project Gutenberg of Canada [Estimated]
          [202 up to December, no current report]
  2,431   PrePrints [Counting the 307 Chinese eBooks +111]
======   ======
32,552   Grand Total [Counting those PrePrints]



Note  Without counting PrePrints, we are still 30,000 plus
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.

The next Newsletter will start with 448 less PrePrints,
unless we already have the new Chinese 2,000+ already.

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
Today using the same accounying methodology it's 32,552

6,391  Grand Total for 2008 [2009 subtracts 448 to start]


532.5 Per Month
  17.5 Per Day
120.5 Per Week [53 Wednesdays in 2008]


I don't have all the other details yet.


Back to how we ended 2007, below.


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
   32,552 on 20090107 [Counting 448 PrePrints]
   32,500 on 20082121 [Counting the 307 Chinese Preprints]
                      [And presuming 3 after official count]
   32,000 ~~ Calculating
   31,500 on 20081021 [not an error, 1,777 PrePrints]
   30,000 on 20081021
   29,500 on 20080919
   29,000 ~~ Calculating
   28,500 ~~ Calculating
   28,000 ~~ 20080516
   27,500 on 20080405
   27,000 ~~ 20080229
   26,500 on 20080126
   26,000 on 20071224
   25,000 on 20071012
   24,000 on 20070710
   23,000 on 20070415

PG-AU
   1,700 on 20081010
   1,600 on 20080208
   1,500 on 20070407

PG Canada
   175 on 20080930
   100 on 20080325
   110 on 20080417




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