A few books

We enter our fifth century by looking at some books – tens of thousands of them, in fact.

The billion dollar book store.

The story behind Project Gutenberg is extraordinary. A chap called Michael Hart was given, in 1971, a billion dollars’ worth of computing time by some people at the University of Illinois. It seems that, at that time, there was more computing capacity than they knew what to do with. Michael decided that the best way to use his gift was to digitise and store as many books as possible, and then make them available to anyone in the world. Free.

The result is that, if you want to find an out-of-copyright book, to read on screen, print off or download to a reading device, Project Gutenberg should be an early port of call. The index, in very small type, prints out at 942 pages (I used Print Preview – I didn’t actually print it!). They’ve got novels galore, but also travel books, scientific works, biography… every sort of book you can imagine or need, in fact.

The search function is a bit cranky, but with a little patience you can find your chosen work, which may be unobtainable, or only obtainable at a very high price, in printed form. Anyway, if you only want to consult a few paragraphs of a book on old telescopes, for instance, you don’t want the hassle of finding it, borrowing or buying it.

I see they’re soliciting donations. So if you’ve got another billion dollars’ worth of computing time to spare, look no further.

(From the Gateway to websites, select "Books". Project Gutenberg is under "Online books".)

"Please sir, I want some more."

From reading about Project Gutenberg, you might get the impression that no other repository for online books was necessary, but others obviously disagree. There are several such projects about, but we’ve selected for the Gateway The Online Books Page and The Bartleby Archives. The first of these acts as an index to other repositories (including Gutenberg), while Bartleby is essentially a reference library, with in-copyright as well as out-of-copyright material.

My brief descriptions can’t do justice to these huge resources. They all repay a little quiet exploration, so launch yourself on a literary voyage of discovery!

(From the Gateway to websites, select "Books". The Online Books Page and The Bartleby Archives are under "Online books".)