e not only measured in numbers. The
results can also be measured in the major influence the project has
had. As the oldest producer of free books on the internet, Project
Gutenberg has inspired many other digital libraries, for example
Projekt Runeberg for classic Nordic (Scandinavian) literature and
Projekt Gutenberg-DE for classic German literature, to name only two,
which started respectively in 1992 and 1994.

Projekt Runeberg was the first Swedish digital library of books from
public domain, and a partner of Project Gutenberg. It was initiated in
December 1992 by the students' computer club Lysator, in cooperation
with Linkoeping University, as a volunteer project to create and collect
free electronic editions of classic Nordic literature and art. Around
200 ebooks were available in full text in 1998. There was also a list
of 6,000 Nordic authors as a tool for further collection development.

Projekt Gutenberg-DE was the first German digital library of books from
public domain, created in 1994 as a partner of Project Gutenberg. Texts
were available for online reading, with one webpage for short texts and
with several webpages--one per chapter--for longer works. There was
an alphabetic list of authors and titles, and a short biography and
bibliography for each author.

Project Gutenberg keeps its administrative and financial structure to
the bare minimum. Its motto fits into three words: "Less is more." The
minimal rules give much space to volunteers and to new ideas. The goal
is to ensure its independence from loans and other funding and from
ephemeral cultural priorities, to avoid pressure from politicians and
others. The aim is also to ensure respect for the volunteers, who can
be confident their work will be used not just for decades but for
centuries. Volunteers can network through mailing lists, weekly or
monthly newsletters, discussion lists, forums and wikis.

Donations are used to buy equipment and supplies, mostly computers,
scanners and blank CDs and DVDs. Founded in 2000, the PGLAF (Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation) has only three part-time
employees.

More generally, Michael Hart should be given more credit as the
inventor of the electronic book (ebook). If we consider the ebook in
its etymological sense--that is to say a book that has been digitized
to be distributed as an electronic file--it was born with Project
Gutenberg in July 1971. This is a much more comforting paternity than