14 DAY TRIAL // A report by AppAdvice reveals that Apple’s iBookstore – the venue soon to be used for downloading books on iPads – already features the full Gutenberg Project lineup of books. 30,000 free e-books will be available at the iPad’s launch on April 3rd, and that’s just from this catalog. Other publishers are already offering free titles in e-format, while Apple continues to sign deals with major labels to distribute as much content as possible on its tablet computer.
The author of the report in question explains that, “[…] When checking out Apple’s iBookstore, I noticed that Apple has decided to include these directly. I obviously haven’t had the chance to count them, but it appears that the entire catalog is available for free download.” “This is obviously very good news, making it easier than ever to access a lot of good literature on the cheap,” the author concludes. And it is good news.
Abbreviated as PG, Project Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, according to Wikipedia, to “encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks.” The project was founded by Michael S. Hart in the early ‘70s, and it is the oldest digital library available.
Full texts of public-domain books make up most of the items in its collection, while the project tries to make these as much accessible as possible, in long-lasting, open formats that can be used on almost any system that has a screen, the same knowledge base article reveals. It is affiliated with many independent organizations and their respective projects, sharing the same goals. Statistics show that, as of December 2009, Project Gutenberg has had well over 30,000 items in its collection.
It is also known that Gutenberg releases are generally available in plain text, but other formats are also included, to make content as widely accessible as possible. Additional formats include HTML, PDF, EPUB, MOBI, and Plucker. Although most releases are in English, works are also available in many different languages. The affiliated projects providing additional content to Gutenberg are numerous, and include regional and language-specific works. One of them is the Internet-based community for proofreading scanned texts called Distributed Proofreaders.