[Overview]
In January 2004, Project Gutenberg spread across the Atlantic with the
launching of Project Gutenberg Europe (PG Europe) and Distributed
Proofreaders Europe (DP Europe) by Project Rastko, a non-governmental
cultural and educational project located in Belgrade, Serbia. DP Europe
uses the software of the original Distributed Proofreaders. DP Europe
is a multilingual website, with its main pages translated into several
European languages by volunteer translators. In April 2004, DP Europe
was available in 12 languages. The long-term goal is 60 languages and
60 linguistic teams representing all European languages. DP Europe
supports Unicode to be able to proofread eBooks in numerous languages.
Unicode is an encoding system that gives a unique number for every
character in any language. DP Europe finished processing its 100th book
in May 2005 and its 500th book in October 2008. DP Europe operates
under "life +50" copyright laws. When it gets up to speed, DP Europe
will provide eBooks for several national and/or linguistic digital
libraries.
[In Depth (published in 2005, updated in 2008)]
In 2004, multilingualism became one of the priorities of Project
Gutenberg, like internationalization. Michael Hart went off to Europe,
with stops in Paris, Brussels and Belgrade. In Belgrade, he met with
the team of Project Rastko, to support the creation of Distributed
Proofreaders Europe (launched in December 2003) and Project Gutenberg
Europe (launched in January 2004).
The launching of Distributed Proofreaders Europe (DP Europe) by Project
Rastko was indeed a very important step. DP Europe uses the software of
the original Distributed Proofreaders and is dedicated to the
proofreading of books for Project Gutenberg Europe. Since the very
beginning, DP Europe has been a multilingual website, with its main
pages translated into several European languages by volunteer
translators. DP Europe was available in 12 languages in April 2004 and
22 languages in May 2008.
The long-term goal is 60 languages and 60 linguistic teams representing
all the European languages. When it gets up to speed, DP Europe will
provide books for several national and/or linguistic digital libraries.
The goal is for every country to have its own digital library
(according to the country copyright limitations), within a continental
network (for France, the European network) and a global network (for
the whole planet).
A few lines now on Project Rastko, which launched such a difficult and
exciting project for Europe, and catalyzed volunteers' energy in both
Eastern and Western Europe (and anywhere else: as the internet has no
boundaries, there is no need to live in Europe to register). Founded in
1997, Project Rastko is a non-governmental cultural and educational
project. One of its goals is the online publishing of Serbian culture.
It is part of the Balkans Cultural Network Initiative, a regional
cultural network for the Balkan peninsula in south-eastern Europe.
In May 2005, Distributed Proofreaders Europe finished processing its
100th book. In June 2005 Project Gutenberg Europe was launched with
these first 100 books. DP Europe supports Unicode to be able to
proofread books in numerous languages. Created in 1991 and widely used
since 1998, Unicode is an encoding system that gives a unique number
for every character in any language, contrary to the much older ASCII
that was meant only for English and a few European languages.
On August 3, 2005, 137 books were completed (processed through the site
and posted to Project Gutenberg Europe), 418 books were in progress
(processed through the site but not yet posted, because currently going
through their final proofreading and assembly), and 125 books were
being proofread (currently being processed). On May 10, 2008, 496 books
were completed, 653 books were in progress and 91 books were being
proofread.