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.