Project Gutenberg offers free e-books and as an author and publisher, I want to assure those you don't use the site that everything there is out of copyright, otherwise known as in the public domain. I am aware that people steal and use others' work, justifying it as "if you can't figure out how to keep it out of my hands, then it's mine." And while I have used Google Books from time to time, I feel uneasy when there, even when I am looking up something that isn't in print or is the kind of rare book which costs two hundred bucks. Google is trying to swallow up the whole world, including books which belong to authors, their estates, or their publishers. But this post is about Project Gutenberg, which not only did not need Google's abandoned mission statement "Don't be evil," because it started out good and has stayed good.
Project Gutenberg came into being in the early 1970s, when the late great Michael S. Hart.
Hart was a graduate of the University of Illinois and had a loose affiliation with what was then Illinois Benedictine College (now Benedictine University). He realized that the computer would revolutionize publishing in the same way that the metal plates used by Johannes Gutenberg to print his famous Bible did in the 1450s.
Before Project Gutenberg, if people wanted to read an old book held by a distant library, they didn't need the time off work and the travel budget to go to the book. With a system of linked computers, the book could come to readers in a computer lab, this being a time before the personal computer or the internet as we know it.
Michael Hart made Project Gutenberg a free service, supported by donations and grants when Hart could get them. He built the hosting computers from components, and he lived very frugally on part-time income. He took no money from the Project for himself. Hart passed away in 2011, at the age of 64, and if you search for his name, you find tributes to him, as well as over a hundred e-books he wrote and posted to the site for people to read for free.
In future posts in this series, I'll share some of the literary treasure I've found at Project Gutenberg over the years. I just love a service to benefit others, which makes no profit, and which is run by volunteers. Proof that it can be done!
In the meantime, if you want to look for free e-books at Project Gutenberg, HERE'S A LINK. You don't need to register with them or download anything or pay anything. Just search for what you want, click on the link for it, and read whenever you want.
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