Summer's here and it's time to catch up on your reading. Project Gutenberg is sponsoring the World eBook Fair beginning July 4th and running through August 4th and will be offered the same time next year. Over 300,000 titles will be offered, of those 95% are in the public domain (no longer copyright protected) and the other 5% have been donated by their copyright holders for this event. The books can be downloaded and read on almost any computer and some cellphones and PDAs. The idea behind this project is to give books away, to be copied and shared with others. The sponsors hope to encourage knowledge and battle illiteracy. Gregory Newby of Project Gutenberg, was quoted in the Boston Globe ("Free chapter added to saga of e-books" by David Mehegan) as saying, "It breaks my heart to go into Barnes & Noble and find Jane Austen for sale in a trade format. Where does that money go? It's close to profiteering. No author is getting any money for it. I feel sorry for schools, where kids are now reading Canterbury Tales or Huckleberry Finn, and the schools are spending millions of dollars from their budgets to buy the books. We're giving the stuff away for free."
Bring your PDA or laptop with you on summer vacation and enjoy a good book. You can learn more about Project Gutenberg by visiting their site at www.gutenberg.org.
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