This postFirst, a nice article from the Edmonton Sun on Project Gutenberg:
Think of Newby, Akrigg and Hart as a breed of literary Indiana Jones — searching along forgotten bookshelves, instead of dark, damp tombs. The thinking man’s library raiders — with computers instead of wooden crates to store their prized finds.
Their offspring is Project Gutenberg, which is part of a remarkable, grassroots system — independent organizations stretching around the world — that has quietly captured thousands (or even a million if you look at the collection very broadly) of culturally important books, for anyone with a computer to call up.
It’s been a while since I’ve done anything directly with PG (see my books page), and man, I miss it. Project Gutenberg rocks. :)
Also, Google Books has made U.S. copyright renewal records available for download. (They were already available before through Project Gutenberg, but Google’s XMLized them so they’ll be easier to use.) The cool thing about these records?
For U.S. books published between 1923 and 1963, the rights holder needed to submit a form to the U.S. Copyright Office renewing the copyright 28 years after publication. In most cases, books that were never renewed are now in the public domain. Estimates of how many books were renewed vary, but everyone agrees that most books weren’t renewed. If true, that means that the majority of U.S. books published between 1923 and 1963 are freely usable.
(U.S. books published before 1923 are out of copyright and safely in the public domain. And that’s a wonderful, beautiful thing.) I need to look through the list and see how many of the post-1923 books I want to digitize and republish are out of copyright…
