tion in "text format",
meaning that a book can be copied, indexed, searched, analyzed and compared with
other books. Contrary to other formats, the files are accessible for
low-bandwidth use. The main source of new Project Gutenberg eBooks is
Distributed Proofreaders, launched in October 2000 by Charles Franks to help in
the digitizing of books from public domain.

2. A BET SINCE 1971

= In a Few Words

If the print book is 5 centuries and a half old, the electronic book is only 37
years old. It is born with Project Gutenberg, created by Michael Hart in July
1971 to make available for free electronic versions of literary books belonging
to public domain. A pioneer site in a number of ways, Project Gutenberg was the
first information provider on an embryonic internet and is the oldest digital
library. Long considered by its critics as impossible on a large scale, Project
Gutenberg counted 25,000 books in April 2008, with tens of thousands downloads
daily. To this day, nobody has done a better job of putting the world's
literature at everyone's disposal. And to create a vast network of volunteers
all over the world, without wasting people's skills or energy.

During the fist twenty years, Michael Hart himself keyed in the first hundred
books, with the occasional help of others from time to time. When the internet
became popular, in the mid-1990s, the project got a boost and an international
dimension. Michael still typed and scanned in books, but now coordinated the
work of dozens and then hundreds of volunteers in many countries. The number of
electronic books rose from 1,000 (in August 1997) to 2,000 (in May 1999), 3,000
(in December 2000) and 4,000 (in October 2001).

37 years after its birth, Project Gutenberg is running at full capacity. It had
5,000 books online in April 2002, 10,000 books in October 2003, 15,000 books in
January 2005, 20,000 books in December 2006 and 25,000 books in April 2008,
with 340 new books available per month, 40 mirror sites in a number of
countries, books downloaded by the tens of thousands every day, and tens of
thousands of volunteers in various teams.

Whether they were digitized 30 years ago or they are digitized now, all the
books are captured in Plain Vanilla ASCII (the original 7-bit ASCII), with the
same formatting rules, so they can be read easily by any machine, operating
system or software, including on a PDA, a cell phone or an eBook reader. Any
individual or organiza