The Million Book Project

I've been visiting the Internet Archive for years and I don't know if I've somehow missed this all along or if it's a recent addition. The Million Book Project is precisely what the name implies: a project to digitize a million books. Some 14k books are now posted and many more are currently listed but still in preparation. There are some wonderful books to be found here: great literature, science, math, grammar, history, etc. I just downloaded a book of Omar Khayyam I'm anxious to get to.I hope I'm not out of line in posting this since it isn't about a particular book. I just thought it'd be a shame if this excellent and improving collection of online books went unnoticed by any of the book lovers on this forum.

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Dog is my copilot.

Check the history of Project Gutenberg.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

The Gutenberg Project is also online at the Internet Archive. It's been there for as long as I've been aware of the IA, but of course it predates the IA. Although there are lots of books available, they aren't in convenient formats like those at Million Book. However, you do find a number of audio books at Gutenberg.

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Dog is my copilot.

I was thinking more about the history. PG began IIRC back in 1971, long before graphical formats, html, or the WEB. It was oriented towards retrieval through gopher, archie and veronica. But dimes change and today's dime in certainly different that the older ones. The MBP is as exciting today as PG was back then but I can tell you that in it's time, PG made as big an influence as Cliffs Notes. (aside:I had a friend who was the main programmers for CN. They had to be dragged into the Internet. Got one of my first Usenet feeds from him.)

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

jar reminisces:

quote:

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PG began IIRC back in 1971, long before graphical formats, html, or the WEB. It was oriented towards retrieval through gopher, archie and veronica.

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I can remember using those programs. I can also remember paying out the a$$ to do so. CompuServe charged something like $22 per hour for a 9600bps connection, and I had to dial long distance to use it until the early 90s.

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Dog is my copilot.