PAST INNOVATIONS AND FUTURE INITIATIVES

Project Gutenberg has evolved its practices over the years, and has

often been a leader in the creation and distribution of eBooks. Some

past innovations include the following, and all are still in active use

today:

Development of an open content trademark license (1991-

1993), which is intended to guarantee to readers that public

domain items remain free, while placing restrictions on the

trademarked name “Project Gutenberg” to protect against

abusive practices by those who would sell the public domain

items;

File/directory-based access to the collection, guaranteeing

ease of copying (by file, or subcollection, or the entire

collection), mirroring, and large-scale redistribution

(1994);

Anonymous access for all readers, requiring no logins or

authorization for any items (1994);

Web-based access to content, and development of procedures

to assure HTML is valid and well-formed (1996);

The Copyright How-To, including the Rule 6 How-To for non-renewed

items (2000 & 2008);

Support of Distributed Proofreaders (2002-2004), for

crowdsourced proofreading and other aspects of new eBook

creation;

Implementation of eBook reader formats, for free use on

mobile phones, tablets, and other devices (2009);

Free redistribution of metadata as a separate download (2007

& 2012);

Integration with OneDrive, Dropbox, and other mechanisms

for readers to employ “cloud” storage for eBooks (2013);

Fully automated conversion from master formats to eBook

formats (2013).

Project Gutenberg has ongoing initiatives to improve service offerings

to readers. There are no definite timelines for these, and assistance

(or partnerships!) are always of interest. Some future initiatives may

include:

Continued efforts to separate the “collection” from the

“interface,” making it easier for different Web-based skins

to be used to access content;

Mechanisms for creation of personal bookshelves, “shopping

carts” or other reading lists, for users to more easily

track items of interest;

Crowdsourced reviews, errata and improvements to eBooks,

including capabilities for forked versions, versioning, and

other techniques common among developers of free software;

Improvements in ability to identify and filter items by the

author’s death date, which is the most common criterion for

determining public domain status of older items, in countries

other than the US;

Better tracking of sources used, including for harvested

scans; even with no guarantee of faithfulness to a

particular print source, information about source is

frequently requested;

More languages, more formats, and additional content types;

Encouragement of innovative ideas by Project Gutenberg’s

readers and other fans;

Ongoing evolution in the utility of Project Gutenberg eBooks

for future reading devices.

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