Project Gutenberg

Recently I have become incredibly interested in electronic books also referred to as ebooks. They are intended as a digital equivalent to physical books. They have however received considerable attention now Amazon and Apple have released consumer reader products with extensive libraries of content for their devices. These two are however not the only sources of books for your new devices. The is a wealth of knowledge and literature available for these devices from the public domain.

Michael Hart started Project Gutenberg in 1971 when he had access to the Xerox Sigma V mainframe at the Materials Research Lab at the University of Illinois. The first book entered into the project was the "Declaration of Independence" which Hart typed up and then send to all users on the network. Since then the project has expanded to include can download over 30,000 free ebooks which can be read on a range of desktop and portable devices.

The philosophy of Project Gutenberg is all books and documents outside of copyright should be freely available to all.

Our books are free in the United States because their copyright has expired.

Quote 1: Our books are free in the United States, credit Project Gutenberg.

For a full history and in depth look at the project philosophy you should read the about page of the project wiki.

So if you are looking to load your ereading device with some old classics you have yet to read I suggest you check out Project Gutenberg. You may find some you have always wanted to read by Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare or H. G. Wells. For a full list of popular books check out the Top 100 Books index.

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.