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Approved-By:  "Michael S. Hart" <HART@VMD.CSO.UIUC.EDU>
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.gutnberg
Date:         Sun, 10 Jan 1993 08:49:45 CST
From:         "Michael S. Hart" <HART@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu>
Subject:      1993 Schedule

Introduction:  we are going to need your help more than ever in 1993

Now that most of you should be back receiving notes, here is a short
outline of the Project Gutenberg schedule for 1993.

As most of you know, we double our production each year on January 1
so we are scheduled to release four electronic texts each month now.

As usual, I spent the holiday break finding out just how hard it can
be to release four books instead of two. . .not easy enough for just
me to do the editing and getting them into shape.

As some of you are aware, it takes about 10 hours to get the average
etext set up for release after it arrives from those who are so kind
as to prepare them for us.  As some of you are also aware, I do this
as much as I can, as that is one area no one has volunteered for.

This process includes making up and attaching the header and footer,
making sure there are two spaces following sentences and colons, and
checking spelling and quotation marks, putting blank line at chapter
headers, four blank lines betwen chapters and one blank line between
paragraphs.  Oh, there is more. . .but you get the idea.

For a person who is a "content over form" kind of person, I spend an
enormous amount of time on this, and even then I usually go through,
in some detail, and remove all the "widows and orphans" so the lines
don't consist of a single word, or even begin or end with one single
word from the next or preceding sentence.  If you would like to take
a look at how this works, take all the returns off the end of lines,
make sure you leave symbols for paragraph and chapter breaks (change
them all to *'s plus spaces or something), and then set an automatic
margin for 65, 70, or 75.  Now look to see how odd the sentences are
when compared to the most recent Anne of Green Gables story, Anne of
the Island.

Yeah, yeah, I know I am nuts to do this, but I want our etexts to be
easier to read than a paper book containing the same words.  Why put
the old limitations of paper margins on an etext which can have wide
margins here and narrow margins there without wasting paper (without
wasting hard returns, in this case).

You don't have to do all the things I have listed above, but if your
efforts were to include half of them, then I would have no more work
to do with four etexts a month this year than I did with two in 1992
or with one in 1991, or one every two months in 1990, etc, etc, etc.

Let's face it, the day when a single person could do a majority of a
year's work of Project Gutenberg is long gone, and what has been the
height of disorganization since 1971 is going to have to be a little
more organized each year, if we are going to double production every
year as we have been.

I used to be able to name every book we released, ever.  Now, I have
trouble just naming the four January titles sometimes.  We plan a 48
etext schedule for 1993, and four of them are already out there.  It
is going to take a decent effort to get through the next few months,
but by April or May we should be used to the idea that we can really
get four books out per month without going totally bonkers from over
exertion and eye and finger strain.  (I know I have worked enough if
my fingers can't hit the right keys any more. . .when will I get the
voice activated computer?)

Our current goals for 1993 are to produce the following:

1.  Light Literature
2.  Heavy Literature
3.  Reference Books
4.  Computer Books
5.  Scientific Data


1.  Light Literature

Light Literature is something your whole family can share.  Movies,
television shows, etc. are a great example. . .when the family gets
back from Hook, Alice in Wonderland, Beauty and the Beast, Alladin,
or a similar show, parents can bring their kids to the computer and
show them the source of what they just saw (or kids can bring their
parents and grandparents to the computer just as well).

(We still need volunteers for Beauty and Alladin)

2.  Heavy Literature

Heavy Literature could still be attached to movies, such as 20,000
Leagues Under the Sea (in progress along with the rest of Verne's)
or Moby Dick.  While Light Literature might be suited to student's
first book reports, Heavy Literature would be more suited to books
for high school and college.  The Brontes, Milton, Chaucer, Austen
and Shakespeare would be included in this category, as well as our
collection of American authors including Cather, Twain, as well as
colonial authors, and the great works of the Freedom Shrine.

3.  Reference Books

These will include thesaurii, dictionaries, encyclopedias, etc.

They will include all the great Public Domain reference books.


4.  Computer Books

These will include more network guides like Zen and the Art of the
Internet, NUSIRG. . .the Northwest User Services Internet Resource
Guide, Surfing the Internet, etc, and also DOS, Mac and UNIX books
and manuals.


5.  Scientific Data

We plan to release samples of the more famous transcental numbers,
along with some of the more famous irrational numbers, with proofs
and/or descriptions.  Perhaps we will be lucky enough to inspire a
few people to study these numbers and come up with patterns that a
whole world would love (or hate) to see in some of them (much as a
theory of prime numbers would cause different reactions).


Well, during those last portions my fingers gave out on me again,
so I will wind this up someone, and also go back to the beginning
to put some kind of introduction on this, now that I know what to
expect to have below the introduction.

(As usual, this was written at a live terminal, without the usual
spell checkers, etc.  I also note that I just dropped a character
from the margins on this screen. . .oh, well.  To all those I can
recall asking me about the program that justifies my margination:
if you can write such a program you should be instantly famous in
several fields.  It is just something I do in my hassles with the
form versus content issue.)

Once again, let me thank all those who have assisted on the books
and other efforts require to keep Project Gutenberg going.  Don't
forget. . .half our effort goes into copyright research, searches
for editions that we can prove are Public Domain, and getting the
raw etexts into some shape people will enjoy reading onscreen.

The year before last people told me I spent too many words in the
thanking of those who volunteered, but last year people told me I
spent too little.

Truly there is no way anyone can ever thank our volunteers enough
for what they are doing.  Never before has such an effort been at
all possible, and once the books are in etext, they will create a
beginning for a library of a kind the world has never seen, where
the books are checked out and never returned, without the library
card we so often associate with libraries, without rebinding, and
without reshelving, without books being lost, and for those I see
writing papers. . .without those mountains of 3 x 5 cards we used
to quote (and misquote) our sources.

We need your help twice as much this year as last year just to do
twice as many books. . .but we also need each book to be twice as
good in its preparation or I will have to do twice as much in the
editing process. . .which I cannot do.  Of course, someday I will
hear from a volunteer who wants to do this same kind of work, and
then we can divide the work among us.

You are the people who make Project Gutenberg what it is, not me.
I just got the ball rolling.  We should make some effort to get a
continuing organization going which will keep the Project running
without me, which will create and operate Public Domain Registers
which will be the flip side of the Copyright Registers, and those
other things that are so far over the horizon of the future I can
not quite make them out.

Again my thanks to all, including those who send those little one
line notes that keep me going when I run out of gas. . .you don't
know how much those mean to me. . .and also to those who yell and
scream at me. . .that motivates me, too.

Happy New Year To You All!
=====================================================

Thank you for your interest,

Michael S. Hart, Professor of Electronic Text
Executive Director of Project Gutenberg Etext
Illinois Benedictine College, Lisle, IL 60532
No official connection to U of Illinois--UIUC
hart @uiucvmd.bitnet or hart@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU