Day 281: Project Gutenberg’s World eBook Fair Garners Big Press

In addition to the June 2 front page article in the Boston Globe, this one came out the next day and is on several major news outlets.

Groups to give free access to online books
Project Gutenberg, World eBook Library Prepare to Provide Free Access to 300,000 Texts Online

[The projects] plan to make “a third of a million” e-books available free for a month at the first World eBook Fair. Downloads will be available at the fair’s Web site from July 4, the 35th anniversary of Project Gutenberg’s founding, through Aug. 4.

… But the book fair won’t be the last chance for e-bookworms to devour works ranging from “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” to “Old Indian Legends,” not to mention dictionaries and thesauruses, without paying for them.

Project Gutenberg founder Michael Hart, who first announced the ambitious plan a month ago, said Friday the partners are on track to make 1 million books available for the annual fair’s one-month run in 2009, with more appearing in subsequent years. About 100,000, he said, will be permanently available at the handful of Project Gutenberg sites on the Internet.

“We want to give the most books to the most people,” the 59-year-old Hart said by phone from Urbana, where he established the project in 1971 … “It has been our goal since the dawn of the Internet to break down the bars of ignorance and illiteracy.”

… Based on fast-increasing demand, he predicted there will be 10 million e-books available by 2020.

For the record, “most books to the most people” is a line I offered Michael as the most precise way to describe the premise of Project Gutenberg.

Please visit the World eBook Fair and download away beginning July 4th.