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Bookworms, rejoice: Project offers texts for free

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published June 3, 2006

infobox: CLICK AND READMore than 300,000 texts will be available free online from July 4 to Aug. 4. The texts can be accessed at:http://gutenberg.orghttp://worldebookfair.com

CHICAGO - Electronic book devotees may want to set aside some extra time this summer, as two nonprofits are preparing to provide free access to 300,000 texts online.

Project Gutenberg and World eBook Library plan to make "a third of a million" e-books available free for a month at the first World eBook Fair. Downloads will be available at the fair's Web site from July 4, the 35th anniversary of Project Gutenberg's founding, through Aug. 4.

The majority of the books will be contributed by the World eBook Library. It otherwise charges $8.95 a year for access to its database of more than 250,000 e-books, documents and articles.

But the book fair won't be the last chance for e-bookworms to devour works ranging from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to Old Indian Legends, not to mention dictionaries and thesauruses, without paying for them.

Project Gutenberg founder Michael Hart said Friday that the partners are on track to make 1-million books available for the annual fair's one-month run in 2009, with more appearing in subsequent years. About 100,000, he said, will be permanently available at the handful of Project Gutenberg sites on the Internet.

"We want to give the most books to the most people," the 59-year-old Hart said. "It has been our goal since the dawn of the Internet to break down the bars of ignorance and illiteracy."

The Gutenberg books, typed and scanned into computers by thousands of volunteers, mostly are those that are no longer protected by copyright. They include fiction, nonfiction and reference books and will be available for worldwide readers in about 100 languages.

[Last modified June 3, 2006, 06:34:42]