r the whole planet).

A few lines now on Project Rastko, which had the boldness to launch such a
difficult and exciting project for Europe, and catalysed volunteers' energy in
both Eastern and Western Europe (and anywhere else: as the internet has no
boundaries, there is no need to live in Europe to register). Founded in 1997,
Project Rastko is a non-governmental cultural and educational project. One of
its goals is the online publishing of Serbian culture. It is part of the Balkans
Cultural Network Initiative, a regional cultural network for the Balkan
peninsula in south-eastern Europe.

In May 2005, Distributed Proofreaders Europe finished processing its 100th
eBook. In June 2005 Project Gutenberg Europe was launched with these first 100
eBooks. PG Europe operates under "life +50" copyright laws. On August 3, 2005,
137 books were complete (processed through the site and posted to Project
Gutenberg Europe), 418 books were in progress (processed through the site but
not yet posted, because currently going through their final proofreading and
assembly), and 125 books were being proofread (currently being processed). DP
Europe supports Unicode to be able to proofread eBooks in numerous languages.
Unicode is an encoding system created in 1991 that gives a unique number for
every character in any language.
From the Past to the Future

10 books online in August 1989; 100 books in January 1994; 1,000 books in August
1997; 2,000 books in May 1999; 3,000 books in December 2000; 4,000 books in
October 2001; 5,000 books in April 2002; 10,000 books in October 2003; 15,000
books in January 2005; and 1 million books planned for 2015.

But Project Gutenberg's results are not only measured in numbers, which can't
compete yet with the number of print books in the public domain. The results
also include the major influence that the project has had. As the oldest
producer of free eBooks on the internet, Project Gutenberg has inspired many
other digital libraries, for example Projekt Gutenberg-DE for classic German
literature and Projekt Runeberg for classic Nordic (Scandinavian) literature, to
name only two.

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 fr