By Gregory B. Newby
CEO Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
Contents
ITEMS ARE IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN FOR ONE OF THREE REASONS
COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT POLICY AND EARLY MARKUP
EVOLUTION IN PROOFREADING: DISTRIBUTED PROOFREADERS
COPYRIGHT CLEARANCE OR PERMISSION
EVOLUTION OF MASTER SOURCE FORMATS
"NO SWEAT OF THE BROW COPYRIGHT"
PAST INNOVATIONS AND FUTURE INITIATIVES
Project Gutenberg creates and freely distributes electronic books(eBooks). This document offers elements of the story of ProjectGutenberg’s methods and practices for creating those eBooks, and thesurrounding procedures for making them as widely available as possible.Project Gutenberg seeks to make the world’s great literature enjoyableand accessible.
The first Project Gutenberg eBook was created on July 4, 1971. MichaelS. Hart had been granted access to a powerful mainframe computer atthe University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and realized that hisgreatest impact would be by digitizing and distributing free literature(for more history, see: The eBook is 40 (1971-2011), by Marie Lebert).
Michael took a printed copy ofUnited States Declaration ofIndependenceto the computer laboratory,where he sat at the teletype terminal and typed this first eBook. Hedistributed it via email to the people he knew about via the Internet’spredecessor, ARPAnet, which was available at UIUC. At that moment, thefirst eBook had been freely distributed to the online community of theday.
Digitization and production techn