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Ask About 10 Years of Free Web Publishing

Posted by Roblimo on from the elder-gods-of-the-world-wide-web dept.

This week's Slashdot questions go to Paul Jones, director of ibiblio.org (formerly MetaLab, before that SunSITE) since it first went live in August, 1992. Ibiblio hosts the world's largest Linux archive (including the LDP), plenty of streamed and downloadable music, the world's longest-running Web cartoon (Dr. Fun), and thousands of texts on topics too numerous to list here. This is truly "the public's library and digital archive," 100% GPL, copyleft, and/or public domain, sponsored jointly by the Center for the Public Domain and UNC. Lots of people talk about free online publishing. Paul Jones just does it, day after day, year after year. Ask him whatever you want; we'll send 10 of the highest moderated questions to him and post his answers as soon as we get them back.

2 of 114 comments (clear)

  1. Donations? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Where do I send the cheque?

  2. Re:Project Gutenberg by gbnewby · · Score: 5, Informative
    Project Gutenberg isn't the biggest collection at ibiblio, but it might be the biggest one that is actually based there (as opposed to stuff that's mirrored, such as the Linux distros). You're right that many of these decisions were made awhile ago, I'll try to clarify.

    First, you should know that we're in the midst of a big Web page redesign. We'll be moving our main pages from http://promo.net/pg to http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg (with virtual domains of course: gutenberg.net and friends). We'll be addressing many of your concerns. You heard it here, first.

    Second, I agree our "finding aids" (in library terms) are poor. It's my #1 priority to get this stuff working better, and in fact several people are working right now to put a new database-driven system into place.

    Responses to your questions: ascii over html: We take everything, but also try to make sure we have a plain ASCII file in addition to other formats. Most volunteers give us just text, since that's what comes from their OCR of books. In the near future, we will have automatic conversion on the fly into nearly ANY format, starting with Braille, then adding HTML, XML, PDF and others including PDA eBook formats....text too, of course.

    small print: Since November 2001 the small print at the start is only 35 lines or so, including the title, author, pub date, etc. The long annoying legalese is at the end now. The automatic conversion process mentioned above will enable us to put the most recent header (with the short front part) on all the older content. As to "why do we need the legalese," read the small print itself, it's pretty clear.

    server indirection: this is one of those finding aids problems we'll overcome. A cookie or other configuration would do the trick here...

    bibliogaphic information: All the recent (last year or two) texts include this right up top. Even the older ones include a "release date" or something similar. The improved finding aids will let you search by publication date, by the way.

    We're actively discussing this stuff on the Project Gutenberg Volunteer's Discussion List, see mailing list subscription info for how to subscribe.

    Dr. Gregory B. Newby
    Chief Executive and Director
    Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
    http://gutenberg.net
    A 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization with EIN 64-6221541