Project Gutenberg Digital Library Seeks To Spur Literacy
Library hopes to offer 1 million electronic books in 100 languagesBy Jeffrey Thomas
USINFO Staff WriterWashington – Thirty-six years ago, a student at the University of Illinois keyed the U.S. Declaration of Independence into a mainframe computer and offered it to others on the network that would become the Internet. Six users downloaded the file, inaugurating what its founder, Michael Hart, decided to call Project Gutenberg in honor of Johannes Gutenberg, the 15th-century German printer who started the movable type printing press revolution.
Using free computer time at his university, Hart keyed in the first 100 books himself and since has devoted his life to the project. Today, he often is described as someone who was a visionary ahead of his time; he has described himself as an “incurable romantic,†a “natural-born workaholic and idealist.†Hart grasped from the outset that his idea for a digital library could change the world, spurring literacy. Project Gutenberg became the first information provider on the Internet and is the oldest digital library with the largest single collection of free electronic books, or e-books.
Project Gutenberg gives away 3 million e-books a week from just one single site, www.ibiblio.org at the University of North Carolina, according to Hart. Most are books whose copyrights have expired in the United States, but there are also audio books, recorded music, sheet music, moving pictures and still pictures. The original video clip of the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing, just four hours before American astronaut Neil A. Armstrong became the first person to step on the moon, is part of the collection, for example.
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Two slightly different post in one.
Mark alerts us to Loire Esturary 2007 from the Wooster Collective‘s Florentijn Hofman. It’s a giant (26 x 20 x 32 meters) rubber duckie floated on the Loire! The artist says:
A yellow spot on the horizon slowly approaches the coast. People have gathered and watch in amazement as a giant yellow Rubber Duck approaches. The spectators are greeted by the duck, which slowly nods its head. The Rubber Duck knows no frontiers, it doesn’t discriminate people and doesn’t have a political connotation. The friendly, floating Rubber Duck has healing properties: it can relief mondial tensions as well as define them. The rubber duck is soft, friendly and suitable for all ages!
Has anyone heard of Duke’s network problems that were supposedly created by iPhones happening anywhere other than Duke? Err I thought not. Sounds like the iPhone was scapegoated for local network problems at Duke.
TODAY! Help taste test food at the Daily Grind‘s Global Grind in the FedEx Global Education Building on Pittsboro St. 11:30 am.
Fred and a /. story alert us to the network problems cause by affluent students at Dook. Both note that the iPhones are killing Duke.net “because the misbehaving iPhones flood the access points with up to 18,000 address requests per second, nearly 10Mbps of bandwidth, and monopolizing the APs [access points] airtime.” (from Network World).
BarCampRDU, which will happen on Saturday August 4 at Red Hat World HQ, will be well fed. Bagels on the Hill will be delivering bagels, cream cheeses and fruit for breakfast (we are paying them but we’re also getting a small break). For more on BarCampRDU visit the BarCamp wiki.
Knight Citizen News Network posts the Principles of Citizen Journalism which continue to be very useful.
Dan Gillmor posts a ten point Citizen Media: Progress Report (It was his keynote recently in Korea.
Jeff Howe tries to evaluate Assignment Zero – Wired + NewAssignment’s effort at crowdsourcing.
Ed Cone is less sure of Assignment Zero’s success.
Jay Rosen, of NewAssignment, responds indirectly with an interview of James Surowiecki author of Wisdom of Crowds at PressThink.
- Library disses Dewey sets up like reader/browser friendly bookshop
- Jock Lauterer’s Road Trip to small town newspapers in NC hits Kenly and other treasures
- Think you’re among smarties? Map of the College-educated by state.
- Danica on saving Serbia’s only Science Blog at Global Voices.
- BarCampRDU is August 4!
- Quetzal Catering from Latin Grill will be providing tortas and salads to the Global Cup Cafe beginning next week. Free intro tasting Wednesday, July 18th, starting at 11:30 a.m., at the Global Cup on the UNC Campus.
Early in the week, we were in Washington. It was hot. Really hot. On my way to the Library of Congress, I ducked into the Jungle Room in the National Botanical Gardens to cool off. On my way in I noticed that the North Carolina Botanical Gardens has part of a show there (Duke Gardens does as well). Sally has the story and a picture or two.
After a hard day of meetings, you need to remember the important things in life. “Done with a feather, it’s erotic. Done with a whole bird, it’s kinky. Done with several emus, it’s poetry.“
The town leaders of Mebane, NC are up in arms over a request by film maker Phoenix Mangus to block off the main street for a 300 zombie shoot.
Phoenix Mangus, a Mebane resident and low-budget film maker, asked the city to let him close West Clay Street from 8 p.m. to 3 a.m. the night of Aug. 18 and the morning of Aug. 19. He wants to shoot a massive zombie attack for his horror/comedy movie.
The working title of that movie was “The Redneck Zombies of Mebane,†but he has since changed it.
In the script, Mangus told the Times-News, contaminated dip tobacco turns users into flesh-eating zombies who attack a small town. A diverse cast of zombie killers, including a waitress and a pig farmer, do battle with them.
Quite a discussion following the news posting above.
Director Mangus gives us a taste of his taste here at Metacafe in British Accent (shot at a fine West Clay Street business) and on his MySpace pages.
Lovely and talented Chapel Hill Town Council Member, Sally Greene, is the epitome of brevity in her response to a question from reporter Jesse James DeConto.
My most recent post to Geek Dad became a small dispute over what exactly are the Blue Ridge Mountains.
I content with support from Grandfather and the state of North Carolina that Grandfather is the highest point in the Blue Ridge. One reader was sure he had me. What about Mount Mitchell? What about Clingman’s Dome?
Well, I say: Mitchell is tallest of the three, but it’s in the small but tall Black Mountains. And Clingman’s Dome is on the NC-TN line fully in the Great Smoky Mountains. Seems simple to me.
Hipper than what you ask.
In the upcoming Fashion and Style section, the NYTimes introduces us to a “Hipper Crowd of Shushers.” Most of the librarians interviewed are in New York which ups the hipness right from the start — in the eyes of a NYTimes writer at least. And really is ordering “girlie” drinks of various colored fruit *really* hip?
But fear not, although I don’t see any UNC grads in the article, I do see some nice quotes from the extremely hip Jessamyn West whose Librarian.net has been hosted on ibiblio for some time now. As you might expect Jessamyn has good things to say.
This just up at GeekDad.com from our trip up in the Valle Crucis area:

Within a short distance in the Blue Ridge Mountains, just off the Blue Ridge Parkway, you can be atop the highest mountain in the range, cross a mile-high swinging bridge, go to the deepest gorge in the Eastern US and then go inside the mountain itself.
Beginning atop Grandfather Mountain (elevation 5,964 ft), a privately owned nature preserve with extensive hiking trails from young child and old dad friendly to challenging for experienced hikers, a small environmentally and animal friendly zoo with some very popular bears, a nature and history museum and extensive picnic opportunities — and in season Scottish Highland Games.
One of the big adventures on Grandfather is taking a stroll across the Mile High Swinging Bridge onto a craggy outlook with a great view. The bridge is an interesting structure in and of itself and the excitement of crossing it almost matches the view.
You could easily spend a day on Grandfather without being there for a special event.
But having seen the mountains from above, it’s only a short trip to see the deepest gorge on the East Coast and the Falls at the start of the Gorge there at Linville. Again there is plenty of camping of all varieties in the area including some challenging hikes into the Wilderness of the Gorge.
One of the best ways to experience the Gorge is to visit the Falls. The recreation area associated with the Gorge and Falls in right off the Blue Ridge Parkway and is easily accessible and federally maintained. (at milepost 316.5).

The walk to the upper falls and the views of the gorge aren’t challenging, but you can up the ante with a steeper descent to the lower falls and the plunge basin — even in the current drought these are the more impressive.
But while being below the mountain is impressive, you could combine the trip and trek with an easy visit into the mountain’s interior.

Linville Caverns is one of the oldest tourist sites in the North Carolina mountains so in some ways there is a period feel to the visit and giftshop to experience before you enter the timeless walk into Humpback Mountain.
The walk is a short one and friendly to the entire family with few challenges — other than being left in absolute darkness for a very few minutes.
In our case, a very amusing guide kept us informed with fact and non-fact and pun as we walked under the limestone.
You should if the spirit moves you and your family know that there are many opportunities to take your kids fishing in the area as well.
Jody Smith (or Huet if you are in Second Life) writes to tell us about his company Brightfield Virtual‘s opening in Second Life at this SURL http://slurl.com/secondlife/Brightfield.
This weekend July 7 and 8.
G’boro 101 creator Roch Smith announces We 101:
I wanted to let you know about a new site I just launched: www.We101.com . It allows people to find and read blogs by location. I hope you will take a look and add your blog.
I did add myself and my blog. And you can too. The Chapel Hill feed aggregation is here.

Fred announced the opening of the sign-up for BarCampRDU this morning and over 100 people signed on before 4 pm!
The BarCampRDU blog has the announcement and the BarCampRDU wiki has the sign-up. Add yourself and come and contribute.

My iPhone started losing its mind.
First it ignored the “slide to unlock” slide. No motion would make it go. I found a workaround: make the slide motion anywho and then press the on button.
But eventually, Safari began to crash at odd times. The other apps would crash. Things were getting worse. Even sliding between photos would cause the app to abort and I’d be thrown back to the home screen.
A reset seems to have fixed it all. Just hold down the on/off button at the top right of the iPhone at the same time you hold down the home button at the bottom center for about three seconds. Eventually you see the Apple logo and then shortly after you are rebooted and reset. For me the problems were all cleared up.
In the past little bit, I’ve become severely socially networked. Not only has most of the planet discovered FaceBook, but I’m also in Orkut, Classmates, Friendster, Multiply, LinkedIn (tons of action there), Flickr, MySpace, Twitter, Del.icio.us, RapLeaf, and several others including Second Life where I am a pioneer but an infrequent visitor.
In the meantime, I’ve become a Dopplr (share your travel plans with friends), Skitch (share your sketched images and annotated photographs with friends and others — like Flickr but with a local mini-Photoshop app and interface), and Pownce (Kevin Rose’s twitter/IM meets file sharing/link sharing/ etc) user. All as smalljones if you are looking for me.
I hope to post evaluations after I finish some year end reports and get tuned completely to the iPhone. Feel free to post advice and reactions here in the meantime.


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