Project Gutenberg :Project Gutenberg Digital Library Case Study by Kaylin Boehme


Introduction :Introduction http://www.gutenberg.org/


Intro, con’t. :Intro, con’t. Michael Hart, University of Illinois $100 million budget from Xerox company “inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies” Over 250,000 eBooks available to download and use freely


Intro, con’t. :Intro, con’t. 100,000 eBooks downloaded daily Top 100 Pride and Prejudice Bram Stoker’s Dracula Kama Sutra Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland War and Peace Science, math, history


Intro, con’t. :Intro, con’t.


Goals and Scope :Goals and Scope Mission Statement: “to encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks”


Goals and Scope, con’t. :Goals and Scope, con’t. Free of Charge No cost Not necessarily free to distribute or use how you please Freedom of Use Not necessarily free of cost Can be used however one wishes


Goals and Scope, con’t. :Goals and Scope, con’t. Entirely run by volunteers Non-profit organization Principle of Minimal Regulation


Goals and Scope, con’t. :Goals and Scope, con’t. Replicator technology Anything inputted to a computer can be reproduced indefinitely Allows everyone on the network to have a copy of a digitized work First computer virus


Selection Criteria :Selection Criteria “bang for the buck”


Selection Criteria, con’t. :Selection Criteria, con’t. 3 categories Light literature (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) Heavy literature (the Bible) Reference (Roget’s Thesaurus)


Copyright :Copyright public domain and copyright permissions


Copyright, con’t. :Copyright, con’t. Project Gutenberg License Readers’ rights Restrictions on public domain and copyrighted books Use of the Project Gutenberg trademark Removal of license results in simply a public domain work Readers must contact the writer before distributing copyrighted materials


Metadata :Metadata “Project Gutenberg is not in the business of establishing standards.”


Metadata, con’t. :Metadata, con’t. Metadata stored separately as RDF file Fancy formatting (physical layout) Start line of main text Title and author Location of title page and table of contents Position of illustrations Proper names to be capitalized


Metadata, con’t. :Metadata, con’t. Bibliographic record info Converting from RDF to MARC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zHKIJ6D_dA


File Formats & media types :File Formats & media types Digitization for Project Gutenberg


File Formats & Media Types, con’t. :File Formats & Media Types, con’t. Plain vanilla ASCII text (ASCII art)


File Formats & Media Types, con’t. :Open, editable formats Other formats HTML Compressed/zipped XML File Formats & Media Types, con’t.


File Formats & Media Types, con’t. :Media types eBooks, eTexts MIDI music, sounds Images Sheet music Movies Human genome File Formats & Media Types, con’t.


Interface Features :Interface Features Searching and Navigation


Interface Features, con’t. :Interface Features, con’t. Basic search Advanced search Browsing Bookshelf by Topic Search by category Searcy by language Search by author or title Top 100 downloads Read and bookmark from browser


Evaluations :Evaluations The good, the bad, and my own opinion


Evaluations, con’t. :Evaluations, con’t. Marie Lebert (positive) “Nobody has done a better job of putting the world’s literature at everyone’s disposal… and to create a vast network of volunteers all over the world, without wasting people’s skills or energy.”


Evaluation, con’t. :Evaluation, con’t. Ronald P. Reck (negative) “Lexical researchers can save considerable time and effort if community expectations change to reflect the need for accurate machine readable information depicting lexical resources.”


Evaluation, con’t. :Evaluation, con’t. My evaluation Limited resources and manpower 3 million books downloaded monthly Poor metadata standards is result of a system run totally on volunteerism


Evaluation, con’t. :Evaluation, con’t. My evaluation, con’t. YouTube’s metadata and collection models similar to Project Gutenberg Bad ones get buried, good ones are promoted, no lack of resources


Citations (MLA) :Citations (MLA) “Company History.” YouTube. 2009. 7 November 2009. http://www.youtube.com/t/about “Doing Multiple Metadata Translations in MarcEdit.” YouTube. 3 March 2009. 6 November 2009. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zHKIJ6D_dA Kestenbaum, David. “Spam Goes Literary.” NPR. 8 August 2006. 5 November 2009. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5624749 Lebert, Marie. “Project Gutenberg, from 1971 to 2005.” Dossiers du NEF. 15 August 2005. 5 November 2009. http://www.etudes-francaises.net/dossiers/gutenberg_eng.htm#public%20domain “Project Gutenberg Wiki.” Project Gutenberg. 2009. 5 November 2009. http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page Individual pages consulted are noted in the slide notes where applicable. Reck, Ronald P. “Metadata Cards for Describing Project Gutenberg Texts.” RReckTek. 4 October 2007. 5 November 2009. http://iama.rrecktek.com/rreck/Metadata_Cards_for_Describing_Project_Gutenberg_Texts.pdf