Project Gutenberg Made Accessible

scishop writes "Mazarin is an open-source interface to Project Gutenberg's library. Mazarin increases the accessibility of Gutenberg's 10,000+ books as it formats the books for HTML display -- providing paginations in addition to generating table of contents and other advanced markup features -- along with enabling users to carry out full-text searches on the entire library."

Tested

[mpost4 (115369)]

I can not test the claim of all 10k works, but I tested what I thought would be most likely to be left out, and I found that they were there.

I Tested Martin Luther.

(if it was not for the printing press the reformation would not have been as sucsessfull as it was)

Re:Tested

[by Anonymous Coward]

What I love is the home page that says:

"All contents copyright 2004 Scott Fortmann-Roe."

Yeah, sure.

Re:Tested

[Siener (139990)]

OK, the Mazarin site is dead, but if it really contains the whole of Project Gutenberg [gutenberg.net], then they have 11 books by Martin Luther. Just try this search [gutenberg.net].

"Project Gutenberg Made Accessible"

[trezor (555230)]

And that is why we are slashdotting it?

At least thats my experience after "testing" it now.

Re:and then just think

[mpost4 (115369)]

I would say not, it was needed, Luther saw the abuses of the Church in Rome, and tried to correct them, he never wanted to break from the church, and infact the break officialy did not happen till 200 years after Luther died, when Rome said there are 2 churches "them and us"

Re:and then just think

[urmensch (314385)]

I think a lot of the unfortunate twists in European history are due to the Catholic church becoming so corrupt as to cause a reformation in the first place.

Anyone want to buy an indulgence?

Re:and then just think

[mpost4 (115369)]

OH no??

see http://www.divinemercysunday.com/plenary_indulgenc e.htm

Re:Yeah?

[leandrod (17766)]

>

it has a few extra books that the protestents took out

Quite to the contrary, these books were added by Rome at Trento. Until them they were usually copied along the Bible without being considered part of the Canon, just like the Shepherd of Hemas before the Montanist heresy.

It was only when Luther decided to have them printed apart from the Bible that Rome decided to try to accuse him of tooking them out of where they never belonged...

>

Jesus still says to Simon Peter "you are the rock upon

Re:and then just think

[mangu (126918)]

While, at first, one would classify your post as either "offtopic" or "flamebait", I think an interesting point can be raised here: the Lutheran reformation was an early consequence of the maxim "information wants to be free".

It was very convenient for the Roman Church to have a practical monopoly on what was widely acknowledged at the time to be the main source of information, the Holy Bible. When the printing press was invented, this diluted that monopoly, since then the ordinary people could afford their own copies of the Bible and became independent from the Church for information. Luther was one of the first to realize that, when he urged people to read the Bible. A consequence of that was that people learned to read. Until early in the 20th century, the literacy rate for countries which are mostly Lutheran, e.g. Scandinavian countries and parts of Germany, were much higher than in southern Europe, where people were mostly Catholic.

A modern analogy:

Catholic Church --> RIAA

Lutheranism --> P2P

Re:and then just think

[mav[LAG] (31387)]

When the printing press was invented, this diluted that monopoly, since then the ordinary people could afford their own copies of the Bible and became independent from the Church for information.

Not only that, but Luther translated the Bible into the common tongue. He used to hang out in pubs and the market and make notes of how people really spoke so that his translation would reflect day-to-day usage. The result - which is solidly argued in The Sovereign Individual and elsewhere - is that the common man

Re:and then just think

[mangu (126918)]

Information doesn't want anything. It merely is.

How do you know that? Apart from the religious dogma that postulates the existence of a homunculus called the "soul", we do not know much about how consciousness arises. What we do know is that information doesn't exist in a vacuum. Information needs a physical medium to exist. Check "An Introduction to Information Theory", by John R. Pierce, Dover Publications, ISBN 0-486-24061-4, chapter 10 - "Information Theory and Physics" for a basic explanation why. No

Re:and then just think

[carlos_benj (140796)]

Well, in my converstaions with information I have determined that while some information does indeed want to be free, other information does not want to rock the boat. Some information simply wants to be left alone. There are also some sub-groups of information that are blissfully ignorant of their situation and do not realize that they are not already free.

I have not had the time to speak with all information, so this is merely anecdotal evidence of the diversity of opinion among informations.

Bruce Sterling

[Discoflamingo13 (90009)]

Information wants you to give me a dollar.

Looks nice and dandy

[tfbastard (782237)]

But did they have to make the tutorial presentation a fullscreen flash file?

PG

[ArbiterOne (715233)]

Most of PG's more well-knownalready are formatted into HTML. [promo.net]

Re:PG

[Charles Franks (686911)]

The promo.net address is an old one and no longer maintained, please reference gutenberg.net [gutenberg.net]

Charles Franks
Founder, Distributed Proofreaders [pgdp.net]

Re:PG

[bbc (126005)]

PG does accept other formats, gladly.

However, it insists on at least a plain vanilla version of a text, as that format has proven to be the most durable and accessible.

So next time you post a text version to PG, make sure you post HTML and PDF versions alongside.

(Do read the rules for HTML in the PG FAQ first, though.)

Re:PG

[GooberToo (74388)]

Ahh. Thanks. That makes putting books into my palm via Plucker, more attractive. I hate having to have all these different readers for different books. The more I can fit into Plucker, the happier I am.

Thanks.

Re:PG

[Charles Franks (686911)]

For PDA-friendly formats of PG e-texts try Blackmask [blackmask.com] and/or Pluckerbooks [pluckerbooks.com]

Charles Franks
Founder, Distributed Proofreaders [pgdp.net]

Re:PG

[flimnap (751001)]

Indeed, there are many, many sites that do all sorts of wonderful [blackmask.com] things [pluckerbooks.com] with Project Gutenberg eBooks. That's the wonderful thing about PG, you can do anything you like with the books.

While personally I prefer the original and the best [gutenberg.net]... hey, whatever floats your boat!

It is very much worth noting that Project Gutenberg would have nowhere near as many eBooks as it does without the help of Distributed Proofreaders [pgdp.net]. Sign up there, and proof just a page a day to make your contribution to preserving literary history. You can proofread as little or as much as you like, and do something worthwhile! Distributed Proofreaders [pgdp.net] is a great way to spend some of your time.

Slashdotted?

[alexatrit (689331)]

I searched on "oil" and came up with numerous passages from various versions of the Bible, and a few recipes from an Italian cookbook. Attempted to search again, but amazingly the site fails to respond...

Re:Slashdotted?

[pinky99 (741036)]

amazingly?
you really want to say, this is the first time you follow a link posted on /. and the server does not respond. Your first link? *g*

Re:Slashdotted?

[alexatrit (689331)]

Being facetious ... never really conveys in writing. Actually, I was more suprised that I actually got off a query before it died.

P2P / Library

[by Anonymous Coward]

Interesting idea, I can't get to the website but a feature I'd want is the content shared P2P so you don't have to rely on a central server for the content.

A central webpage index could just have ed2k links to the files: sharereactor for books. When they update the book they release a new hash-link and the file onto the network.

It being P2P it could open it up to more then just public domain books too ;).

Slashdotted - but nice error messages

[twoshortplanks (124523)]

Hmm, nicely formatted error messages. Does anyone know what this is? I'm assuming it's a mod_perl handler of some sort.

Re:Slashdotted - but nice error messages

[dr_dank (472072)]

In the spirit of the Gutenberg name, seems like there is a new Perl module that simulates Steve Gutenberg's career.

Re:Slashdotted - but nice error messages

[Zocalo (252965)]

Judging by the snippet of Perl at the bottom of the error message I'd say it's part of the Mason [masonhq.com] CMS.

Slooow

[martingunnarsson (590268)]

I think the site is about to go down, it's already terribly slow...

10,000+ books?

[Ronald Dumsfeld (723277)]

10,000+ books. Right, so I've got to read all of them before I can post a comment?

Oh wait, this is Slashdot.

Gutenberg is totally inaccessible

[by Anonymous Coward]

This sounds like it just adds complexity and does not make gutenberg's data accessible.

There were several research projects for which I used pg [slashdot.org] as a corpus. However, pg's a terrible hassle for the first-time researcher, since the format of the introductory text ("we're gutenberg, here's the copyright, blah blah") is inconsistent.

You have to remove the introductory text to avoid bias in the corpus, however there are so many pathological special cases (different formats, spelling, languages, words used, punctuation, case) that it requires several hours of Perl coding to successfully strip the header text from 75% of the documents with >99% accuracy. Yuk.

If gutenberg is serious about making their work more accessible, they should think about the simple concern of ensuring consistency in the header text format.

Text version

[Whitecloud (649593)]

since some seem to have trouble on the index page... here it is:

Project Gutenberg is the brainchild of Michael Hart [slashdot.org], who in 1971 decided that it would be a really good idea if lots of famous and important texts were freely available to everyone in the world. Since then, he has been joined by hundreds of volunteers who share his vision.
Now, more than thirty years later, Project Gutenberg has the following figures (as of November 8th 2002): 203 New eBooks released during October 2002, 1975 New eBooks produced in 2002 (they were 1240 in 2001) for a total of 6267 Total Project Gutenberg eBooks. 119 eBooks have been posted so far by Project Gutenberg of Australia [promo.net].

Click here [promo.net] for the full PG story and here [gutenberg.net] for the latest News [gutenberg.net], and learn about the Stockholm Challenge Award [promo.net] recently won by Project Gutenberg in the category Culture.

The key link is search page [promo.net].

Re:Text version

[jonathan_ingram (30440)]

well, to those with computers & internet connection...

One of the projects run by the Internet Archive [archive.org] is the Bookmobile, which creates, prints, and gives away (for a nominal production fee) books created from public domain sources. One of their most popular products is an illustrated edition of Alice in Wonderland.

who can read English...

Yes, PG's content is primarily English at the moment, but this is only because most of the volunteers up until now have been English. If you are confident in a language other than English, you can help us get more books in this language -- either by scanning them, or by proofing the books which other people have scanned by joining the Distributed Proofreading Project [pgdp.net] (or the new EU sister-project DP Europe [rastko.net]). At the moment the main site has projects available for proofing in German, Latin, French, Spanish, Swedish, Finnish, Dutch, Hebrew, Danish, Italian, ancient Greek, and Gaelic. The EU site has, in addition, books available in Serbian, Slovenian, Romanian, Welsh, Hawaiian, Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, Ukranian, modern Greek, and Bulgarian.

if the copyright has expired...

Yes, the vast majority of books in PG are copyright expired. This isn't a big problem, though, as we've only scratched the surface of the number of copyright expired books. Even at the current rate of growth, there's enough to keep us going until the US copyright regime starts letting new books into the public domain in 15 years or so.

Best way to read online texts?

[GGardner (97375)]

What's the best way to read online texts? There are a bunch of PG texts I might like to read, but reading them in a web browser, as a big text file gets tiring after ten minutes or so. I'm not sure why I can read a book for hours, but the screen for minutes, but there you have it. I don't think that HTML will help this problem -- does anyone have recommendations for better ways to read these files?

Re:Best way to read online texts?

[gunne (14408)]

If you have a palm pilot, i can recommend Weasel Reader [sourceforge.net].
I've been using it for a couple of years on my Palm V, and despite its small screen size it works perfectly for reading ebooks.

Re:Best way to read online texts?

[CGP314 (672613)]

does anyone have recommendations for better ways to read these files?

On an old palm pilot or in the notes folder on an ipod. I found that it's the backlight of a computer screen (and on the new palms) that is what hurts my eyes when trying to read.


-Colin [colingregorypalmer.net]

Re:Best way to read online texts?

[bw5353 (775333)]

What works best for me is any text-editor/word processor. I delete line by line or paragraph by paragraph as I have read them. Don't know why I feel that is comfortable, but it is.

(Keep a backup of the original in case you want to check again what the name of the butler's niece was.)

Re:Best way to read online texts?

[dvdeug (5033)]

It is however a great way to research the classics for info and reports.

That's quite a failure on some levels, if that's all we're doing. One of my personal favorite authors in PG, J. S. Fletcher, is never going to be considered part of the "classics". But he's a nice read for mystery lovers who like Victorian London.

I still like to hunt around old bookshops, and often I can find those works for a buck or two.

Which books? Some of our books can not be found that cheap and many of the ones which can, mi

the tutorial talked to me

[Lord Zerrr (237123)]

I love sexy robot voice tutorials! mazarin tutorial [palary.org]

So much for that theory: ERROR!

[crashnbur (127738)]

This is what I get when I visit the Mazarin link:

error: Can't call method "prepare" on an undefined value at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.3/BookTools/Translator.pm line 20.

context: ...
16: my $dbh=DatabaseConnect("translations");
17:
18:&nb sp; sub Prepare{
19: $dbh=DatabaseConnect("translations");
20: return $dbh->prepare($_[0])
21: or die "Couldn't prepare statement: " . $dbh->errstr;
22: }
23:
24: sub SetLanguage{
...

code stack: /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.3/BookTools/Translator.pm:20
/ usr/lib/perl5/5.8.3/BookTool

Straight HTML = archaic

[Leobinus (782479)]

Bah. Posting HTML is so 1996. You can do so much more with these texts. One example is Open Source Shakespeare [opensource...speare.org], which takes all of Shakespeare's texts, indexes them, presents them in an attractive manner, creates a concordance, provides a full-text search engine, organizes the lines by character, etc.

All of the texts are open source, and you can download the database and source code from the site, too. Check it out.

Bam

[kunudo (773239)]

Monday May 24, @03:14PM : Project Gutenberg made accessible
Monday May 24, @03:15PM : Project Gutenberg made inaccessible

Slashdot'd

[Bipedismaximus (713734)]

"Project Gutenberg Made Accessible"

Oh, the irony that is slashdot.

SCO will file a lawsuit saying they wrote them all

[HiyaPower (131263)]

Gotta turn a living you know...

Gutenberg Disclaimer

[Twinky (32219)]

What always struck me as odd is the enourmous length of the disclaimer that Project Gutenberg attaches to every text. To me it seems to be the most obvious sign of a law system that is ridiculously screwed. No book I ever read had a legal statement like this.

Quote:

LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below, [1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that time to the person you received it from. If you received it on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement copy. If you received it electronically, such person may choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to receive it electronically. THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you may have other legal rights. INDEMNITY You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors, officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause: [1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification, or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect.

Now might be a good time to consider

[SolemnDragon (593956)]

...donating to the good cause. If you don't want to donate money, volunteer to proofread, or it might be worth it for writers out there to consider a notation in your will that will allow your works to pass either directly into the public domain, or, as i have been in contact with lawyers to discuss, simply passing the copyright of your own works on to project gutenberg. This allows them more work to publish, and if you're in a contract somewhere that allows for royalty collection, you can set it up so that those royalties switch to project gutenberg at the time of your death.

Now might also be a good time to contribute an hour a week to a literacy project, or to make a donation there. Adult literacy is a serious issue all over the world, and that includes right here in the states, where there really are bright people out there who could have better lives if they could read. I can't think of a more on-topic subject than project gutenberg to discuss adult literacy and the need for both literacy teaching and to support free literature for the masses such as this project provides.

Just my $0.02...

solemndragon

Funny definition of "accessible..."

[dpbsmith (263124)]

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, Michael Hart's decision to make the basic format of PG texts "plain vanilla ASCII" has resulted in texts that are highly accessible by any meaning I can think of for that word. They are also compact, platform-agnostic, and durable. Texts contributed in the 1980s are fully usable today.

While there have been constant complaints about PG using the "wrong" format, opinions on the "right" format have been the flavor-of-the-month (or at least several flavors per decade). Had PG decided to use a "better" format, all of their volunteer time would probably have been taken up converting (say) WordPerfect to RTF to HTML to SGML to XML, leaving relatively little time to digitize and proofread texts.

Already very accessible...

[ricky-road-flats (770129)]

I only last week downloaded Project Gutenberg as an ISO - it has 9,500 books on it and weighs in at about 3.85 GB. All the books are as plain text within a ZIP file, accessed through a set of basic web pages also on the disc.

It's great - I now have that on my laptop hard drive, mountable by Alcohol, so I'll never be short of anything to read, especially when the web's not available...

I can't find the torrent file I got it through, but if it helps the filename is pgdvd.iso and the size is 4,139,646,976 bytes.

The Project Gutenberg Index as RSS

[grrussel (260)]

I've created an RSS feed from the Project Gutenberg list of etexts. The RSS feed contains titles, authors, descriptions and links to the relevant page or file on http://www.gutenberg.net/

PGDB.rss [eu.org] PGDB.rss.gz [eu.org]

Re:Fully slashdotted

[Whitecloud (649593)]

sure thats the modern version of 10,000 students all rushing to get the same book out that is recommended by the professor :)

Re:unhuh-explanation

[rakjr (18074)]

A guess would be that the script is accessing the database remotely. Thus, if the server is getting slashdotted, there is no way it can talk to the remote database. Instead of die, they should have sent a small text message of "Remote database unreachable."

Hind sight is 20/20 ;)