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 Google Drive, 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 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.