COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT POLICY AND EARLY MARKUP

The eBook collection, and all other aspects of Project Gutenberg, relies

on volunteers to grow. Therefore, selection of items is done mainly

by volunteers. Project Gutenberg seeks to limit duplication in the

collection, and instead prefers to add items not already in the

collection. Improvements to existing items is ongoing, mainly when

errata reports are submitted by readers.

It took over two decades to release the first 100 eBooks, with #100

being published in 1994. Most of those first eBooks were collected

through personal interaction with Hart. He would guide or participate in

the digitization process, often developing procedures to deal with new

characteristics. Footnotes and endnotes, italics and underscores, bold

text, and different fonts all presented challenges for representation as

plain text. Primitive markup techniques were developed, such as using an

underscore character to surround underscored text, _like this_.

It was not until the mid-1990s that hypertext markup language (HTML) was

first used, and at the time it was decided that Project Gutenberg eBooks

should be wholly self-contained. A zip file would include all of the

needed images, and external links were discouraged.

Throughout the entire history of Project Gutenberg, volunteers have been

encouraged to work on items they are interested in, and to make their

own decisions about how to best represent the content.

Forty-Five Years of Digitizing Ebooks: Project Gutenberg's Practices · 第 11 / 30 题