program may be launched in the future,
with a conversion into still more formats (XML, HTML, PDF, TeX, RTF), including
Braille and voice. It will then also be possible to choose the font and size of
characters and the background color. Another eagerly expected conversion is that
of a book from one language to another by machine translation software. This may
be possible in a few years, when machine translation is accurate to 99%. Still,
these books will certainly need some proofreading too by human translators.

4. SHARED PROOFREADING

The main "leap forward" of Project Gutenberg in the last few years is due to
Distributed Proofreaders. Distributed Proofreaders was launched in October 2000
by Charles Franks to help in the digitizing of public domain books. Originally
meant to assist Project Gutenberg in the handling of shared proofreading,
Distributed Proofreaders became the main source of Project Gutenberg books. In
2002, Distributed Proofreaders became an official Project Gutenberg site. In May
2006, Distributed Proofreaders became a separate entity and continues to
maintain a strong relationship with Project Gutenberg.

Volunteers don't have a quota to fill, but it is recommended they do a page a
day if possible. It doesn't seem much, but with hundreds of volunteers it really
adds up. In 2003, about 250-300 people were working each day all over the world,
producing a daily total of 2,500-3,000 pages, the equivalent of two pages a
minute. In 2004, the average was 300-400 proofreaders participating each day,
and finishing 4,000-7,000 pages per day, the equivalent of four pages a minute.
The number of books that have been processed through Distributed Proofreaders
has grown fast, with a total of 3,000 books in February 2004, 5,000 books in
October 2004 and 7,000 books in May 2005, 8,000 books in February 2006 and
10,000 books in March 2007, with five books produced per day and 52,000
volunteers in December 2007.

From the website one can access a program that allows several proofreaders to be
working on the same book at the same time, each proofreading on different pages.
This significantly speeds up the proofreading process. Volunteers register and
receive detailed instructions. For example, words in bold, italic or underlined,
or footnotes are always treated the same way for any book. A discussion forum
allows them to ask questions or seek help at any time. A project manager
oversees the progress of a particular b