Book People Archive

Re: [Fwd: Re: Three quick links on digitizations and their


On Wed, 24 Oct 2007, Jan Szczepanski wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Could someone confirm if it's true or not that
> Open Content Alliance is a very "American"
> and not very "global"? They say that OCA just
> likes the English language.
>
> Is it true to say that OCA is very populistic project
> and not only a nationalistic one?
>
> I'm just asking
>
> Jan


I have been with all of Brewster Kahle's organizations
to some degree since he first became interested in the
world of eBooks quite some time ago, and I can say for
the record the Mr. Kahle, The Internet Archive and the
OCA, as well as other efforts are extremely interested
in doing eBooks in as many languages as they can.

As the founder of Project Gutenberg, I can understand,
with a degree of certainty unavailable to most, that a
host of other people could run Project Gutenberg in an
infinitely better way than I can, and I continually am
asking them to do so, and offering all the assistance/
assistants that I possibly can, but most of them would
prefer to tell me what to do rather than do it, with a
full credit going to them for their efforts.

I am sure the same is true for Mr. Kahle and a variety
of his organizations.

As I am sure many of you are aware, copyrights change,
always for longer terms, never shorter, which resulted
in a number of requests for information to determine a
copyright status in other countries.  However, not one
of those requestion such information has been willing,
even to the point of just taking a first step in these
efforts, other than our Moderator, who should get full
marks for doing do. . . .  The amount of effort to get
just one death date into an already existing ebook was
too much for any one person to do all at once for some
entire collection, but requrts for those who complain,
just to send in the smallest change in the eBooks were
usually falling on deaf ears.

Thus the process of looking up death dates, and adding
them to pre-existing books is taking some time since a
volunteer effort by those demanding it is wanting, and
since the United States was the only country requiring
enough information to determine copyright length it is
appearing that English is too dominant in eBooks.

[This requirement ended around March, 1989, I think.]

However in spite of these drawbacks Project Gutenberg
has created eBooks in over 50 languages as originally
made available at http://www.gutenberg.org

In addition there are over 100 languages available at
http://www.gutenberg.cc

Not to mention ~65 languages at PG of Europe and some
additional French eBooks at PG of Canada.

We are currently working on adding PG South America &
and a PG of Chinese.

I am sure each of these will receive support from The
Internet Archive, The OCA, and Mr. Kahle, personally,
as this has always been the case.

I did not answer the message without first consulting
Mr. Kahle, who did not reply directly because he is a
non-member as I understand, but he did give me this:

"The OCA and Internet Archive are interested
in all works from all over the world."


I agree that the question remains whether the glasses
around the world are half-full or half-empty, when it
comes to various languages.

Nevertheless, I think it is safe to say that the days
of English as the predominant language of the Net are
in decline, with the number of Chinese Internet login
accounts growing at nearly 10%.

I wonder how many of us can actually name 5 languages
that are the most spoken around the world?

No fair peeking!!!


Clue:

I was totally surprised to receive a message from one
person via cell phone text message relay a few years,
or so, ago. . .which I think I mentioned here.

As some of you have seen, my latest, perhaps the last
of my goals, is to translate 10 million ebooks to 100
different languages, for a 1 Billion eBook Library.

There are 250 languages with 1 million speakers.

There are perhaps 25 million public domain books.

There are probably 4 million free eBooks right now.


ONE BILLION eBOOKS IS:


  4 Million eBooks Translated into 250 Languages.
  5 Million eBooks Translated into 200 Languages.
10 Million ebooks Translated into 100 Languages.
15 Million eBooks Translated into  67 Languages.
20 Million eBooks Translated into  50 Languages.
25 Million eBooks Translated into  40 Languages.



Let's Get Started!!!!!!!


Thanks!!!

Michael S. Hart
Founder
Project Gutenberg