Project Gutenberg is an on-line service offerng free e-books which are in the public domain. I daresay they have the largest collection of e-books on the internet.
Somehow, Project Gutenberg has managed to stay out of the current fray set off by Yahoo and Amazon -- two internet giants who have planned to "archive" their books on the internet. Of course the opponents argue that this infringes on copyright, to which I would agree.
So far, in my browsing through the Gutenberg files, I've found only classic literature which I imagine to be free of copyright. My favorites are "spurious and doubtful works of William Shakespeare." I look forward to reading his The Merry Devil and Fair Em!
And while I think this is certainly a worthwhile project, I have a problem reading book-length material on a computer screen. Certainly I could downlaod any of these works and print them out, but you lose the magic of holding a bound and printed book in your hands. If I had to read a Bronte novel, I'm still more apt to look for one at a used book store than I am to download a copy for free.
The nice thing, though, in surfing through their catalog, is coming upon little treasures that I might not otherwise have seen.
I urge all readers and book lovers to check out their site: www.gutenberg.org
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There is actually some research done by Sun when they were designing their web site which said that people read 25% slower on line and want to read 50% less. Which makes online great for blogs and amazon ordering but bad for anything extended. Since the mid 90s, we've probably gotten more used to reading online, but some of the problem seems to be in the technology itself.
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