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Have you considered giving something else to Project Gutenberg instead of money?
Consider (also) giving them your time:
http://www.pgdp.net/c/, or PGDP Europe (much smaller; mostly Serbian poetry), or if you're Canadian http://www.pgdpcanada.net/c/default.php or the Scandinavian Project Runeberg; or if you like the Fraktur font join Project GaGa.

Under US Law, which you say is "actually the same thing" as UK law in this regards, you are quite entirely wrong.

For images there is "BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY, LTD. v. COREL CORP., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 (S.D.N.Y. 1999)" which held that:

[1] On November 13, 1998, this Court granted defendant's motion for summary judgment dismissing plaintiff's copyright infringement claim on the alternative grounds that the allegedly infringed works -- color transparencies of paintings which themselves are in the public domain -- were not original and therefore not permissible subjects of valid copyright and, in any case, were not infringed. [n1] It applied United Kingdom law in determining whether plaintiff's transparencies were copyrightable. [n2] The Court noted, however, that it would have reached the same result under United States law. [n3]

For your book example you say

Example: Say there is a text from a book written in the 1800's that is out of copyright in the US. I want to publish a copy of it, say, for a Kindle or even a discount-book print copy.

I have to find a printing of the source material that is out of copyright already. I need to have a physical book to get the text from that is over 75 years old (or whatever the appropriate copyright term is for that physical book).

I *can't* take a reprinting from 20 years ago and base it on that because *that* book IS copyrighted, even if the source material isn't.

You are wrong again. Facsimile editions (which preserve the layout) don't get a copyright. Even new printings (same words, new layout) don't get a new copyright on the words (they layout may or may not). New text, like new introductions or authors bios do. That doesn't mean publishers don't claim copyright, but it may mean they are invalid. Take a look at the Project Gutenberg FAQ

There are plans to open Project Gutenberg Canada. And there already is Project Gutenberg Europe, located in a life+50 country, which hosts works which are under copyright in the USA.

Another way to donate is to give your personal time, if you're a careful reader with a good eye for mistakes: www.pgdp.net and for the books in less ASCIIfyable scripts the european version, dp.rastko.net (warning, currently down, please don't slashdot it).

I am no math expert, but am old enough to remember using a slide rule. Back in the mid-1960s, I was in a 8th grade math class where we were taught the basics of using a slide rule. Mr Turner, the math teacher even had a small slide-rule on his tie clip. Slide rules are now an obsolete technology that many younger people probably don't even know about. Inexpense pocket calculators have made them obsolete.

Later on I took a couple of Algebra courses in High School and later on at a Junior College. Instead of just using a pocket calculator, the back of the textbook had several large appendixes with tables for looking up the answers to logarithms, square roots and various other types of calculations. I was not like we could just use a pocket calculator to find the answer. If the exact number we were looking for was not in the table, we sometimes had to use interpelation to come up with an estimated answer based on the two nearest answers (not that I remember how to do that).

Back in the early 1970s (or late 1960s) I remember a cover of Popular Science Magazine with a headline about a pocket calculator for only about $800. Even more amazing was a another cover not too long after that with the headline about calculators for under $100. For $100 you could get a pocket calculator that could add, subtract, multiply and divide.

Here are a couple of slide rule links, although the link to the free book about using slide rules from Gutenberg.org, was down when I last tired it.

Slide Rule

Instruction for using a slide rule from Gutenberg.org or the alternate link to what appears to be the same book from Gutenberg Europe

So, as the summary states:
make them available for Web searching
does not mean that there will be a complete text index available (that is full text search,) but instead you can only search for specific works?

That probably means that the search index will be uncorrected OCR, which leads to some inaccurate searches. The problem with using raw OCR is scannos, words that may be recognised as a different word that "looks" the same, for example modem and modern, or an i might be recognised as a slash.

I do that every once in a while on their German counterpart: GaGa

Your time might be better spent at the real Distributed Proofreaders, or DP-Europe, since Projekt Gutenberg-DE is not an offical branch of PG, and actually copyrights its output (unlike the real PG).

Why do you have to warn someone about Gutenberg due to being an English Major?

With this attitude you shouldn't read any old books, in fact I would recommend not to read a lot of today's new papers that are very poorly edited.

The books on Gutenberg are not edited, but preserved as close as possible to their original content. I find it very interesting and educating to read those books despite any mistakes or odd spellings authors and printers may have done. I find often a lot more wisdom in those "badly edited" books than in the very shallow books you find today (btw. often not better edited due to fast turn-arounds).

But then ... that are only my 2 cents worth...

Project Gutenberg

Distributed Proofreaders

Distributed Proofreaders Europe

What happens in a few decades once DP has digitized all "important" English literary works first published on or before 1922?

First, DP isn't just for works in English, important works, or literary works. Indeed, a significant proportion of the items we're currently processing are non-fiction -- and there are works in fifteen different languages in the first proofing round alone. Secondly, it will take a very long time to exhaust the amount of material which is currently public domain. Thirdly, in just about every country except the US, more information is added to the public domain every year. In Canada, for example, the copyright term is life+50 years. This means that, currently, every work written by someone who died before 1955 is public domain -- and on the 1st of January that will move up a year. So, as the years go on, our efforts outside the US (such as DP Europe) will become more important. There's no danger of the world running out of new public domain material -- at least, not outside the US.

Mod me down if you wish, but I have to say that I found Google Print nice, but not too useful. Sure, it's a nice thing that you can search through paper books, but in most cases you can't actually read them; you have to buy them, and this even goes for classics such as "20,000 leagues under the sea" which are already digitized by Project Gutenberg or similar organizations: Google digitizes newer, copyrighted editions even when there are older, public domain editions available. Thus, in my eyes Google Print is little more than a marketing door for on-line bookstores.

On the other hand, French digitalization project Gallica, though sometimes mocked on Slashdot, not only digitizes books, but gives the scans away freely (as in speech), so everyone can read the books in entirety or use them as they please. Both Distributed Proofreaders and Distributed Proofreaders Europe already use Gallica scans to produce completely digitized and free e-books which you can search, read, datamine, or do with them anything that suits you. If Slashdot readers are supporters of free software, this too is something they should revere.

I hope that Europeans will not compete with Google. I hope that they will make bigger, better, and more diverse Gallica.

Oh, so running purely non-profit project like Distibuted Proofreaders Europe and paying for it from our own pocket is not enough, but we should consider paying even more? Just because of bunch of trigger-happy vigilantes? And who guarantees me that if I move to another data center, it won't be added tommorow to a blacklist because of some bizzare "incident"?

I mean, this surely deserves blacklisting 500.000 domains:

"added 2002-10-17; spam support - listwashing, refusal to remove spammers"
"added 2002-10-17; spam support - see groups.google.ca/groups?selm=ur7uqu0mjfgd9k21tonfd b8eqkn1t2kea4%404ax.com&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain"
" added 2003-06-21; called theplanet +1-214-782-7802 - abuse person never returned the call"
"added 2003-06-28; called theplanet +1-214-782-7802 - told them about the SBL and SPEWS listings"
"added 2004-04-25; hosting postfuture.com/pfweb/ on 64.5.35.0/24"
"added 2004-11-20; spam support - hosting www.jackpotdoubler.com on 67.19.157.178"
"added 2005-02-10; spam support - hosting www.epcparts.com on 69.56.229.198"
"added 2005-02-26; spam support - hosting Arameda on 67.19.8.122"
"added 2005-02-26; spam support - see www.projecthoneypot.org/board/read.php?f=8&i=38&t= 38"
"added 2005-03-28; spam support - hosting www.quickinksonline.com on 69.56.216.70, with samples in nanas"

Note that PG and PGA, while related, are distinct entities. When PGEU and PGCanada get going (both are in the planning stages), then we'll have a group of projects, all with the same aim, but tailored to their particular geographical areas. PGEU, in particular, will concentrate on the large amount of *non-English* public domain material out there -- you can help proofread some of it by joining the European version of the US-based Distributed Proofreaders.

It's a nonsense to say that the only things PG should publish should be public domain in *all* countries -- indeed, the major difference between copyright laws in the US and those in the *entire rest of the world* is the main reason to want to branch out and create regional 'editions' of PG. Due to corporate interests, no new material will enter the public domain in the US for at least the next 14 years -- in the rest of the world, new material is added to the public domain on January 1st each year. By 2018, when material published in 1923 becomes public domain in the US, every work published by authors who died before 1948 (for the EU), 1958 (for India), or even 1968 (for Canada) will be public domain in those areas.

The US is currently trying to push life+50 countries to become life+70. When it succeeds in this, it will start pushing for life+70 countries to become life+90. The trend for ever-increasing copyright terms has to be resisted. One of the key ways to do this is to build people's understanding of the need for, and benefits of, the public domain. PG is a key part of this.

Yes, Australia is currently 'Life+50', which means that a work becomes copyright free 50 years after the death of the author (sadly, this will be changing to 'Life+70' soon). I live in the EU, which is 'Life+70'. There's a significant amount of material which is copyright free in the EU and Australia, but still copy restricted in the USA -- basically, anything published after 1922 by an author who died before 1934. We recently started a 'DPEU' to focus on these works. At the moment the focus is on Eastern European languages, but there's a wide variety of content (including some English material).

well, to those with computers & internet connection...

One of the projects run by the Internet Archive is the Bookmobile, which creates, prints, and gives away (for a nominal production fee) books created from public domain sources. One of their most popular products is an illustrated edition of Alice in Wonderland.

who can read English...

Yes, PG's content is primarily English at the moment, but this is only because most of the volunteers up until now have been English. If you are confident in a language other than English, you can help us get more books in this language -- either by scanning them, or by proofing the books which other people have scanned by joining the Distributed Proofreading Project (or the new EU sister-project DP Europe). At the moment the main site has projects available for proofing in German, Latin, French, Spanish, Swedish, Finnish, Dutch, Hebrew, Danish, Italian, ancient Greek, and Gaelic. The EU site has, in addition, books available in Serbian, Slovenian, Romanian, Welsh, Hawaiian, Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, Ukranian, modern Greek, and Bulgarian.

if the copyright has expired...

Yes, the vast majority of books in PG are copyright expired. This isn't a big problem, though, as we've only scratched the surface of the number of copyright expired books. Even at the current rate of growth, there's enough to keep us going until the US copyright regime starts letting new books into the public domain in 15 years or so.

They scale down their operations in the US (which is quite possibly never going to let anything else into the public domain ever again), and switch to sites operated in life+X countries, which release new material into the public domain every year. I'm currently working on scanning some 'newly freed' authors for the brand new European branch of Project Gutenberg's Distributed Proofreaders. These are books written by authors who died in 1933, and whose life+70 year copyright term has just expired.

No new works are due to be freed of copyright restrictions in the US for quite a while (2018 rings a bell -- it's around then). By then, everything written by anybody who died before 1948 will be public domain over here in the UK. In Canada and Australia, everything written by anybody who died before 19*6*8 (unless they follow the EU lead and restrospectively move from life+50 to life+70 for no good reason).

So don't worry, we're not going to run out of material :).