The Early Development of Project Gutenberg c.1970–2000

Download or read book The Early Development of Project Gutenberg c.1970–2000 written by Simon Rowberry and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-06-29 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Project Gutenberg is lauded as one of the earliest digitisation initiatives, a mythology that Michael Hart, its founder perpetuated through to his death in 2011. In this Element, the author re-examines the extant historical evidence to challenge some of Hart's bolder claims and resituates the significance of Project Gutenberg in relation to broader trends in online document delivery and digitisation in the latter half of the twentieth century, especially in the World Wide Web's first decade (the 1990s). Through this re-appraisal, the author instead suggests that Hart's Project is significant as an example of what Millicent Weber has termed a “digital publishing collective” whereby a group of volunteers engage in producing content and that process is as meaningful as the final product.