Part 1 (2/2)
2001: Wikipedia is the first main online cooperative encyclopedia
2001: Creative Cohts on the web
2003: MIT offers its course materials for free in its OpenCourseWare
2004: Project Gutenberg Europe is launched as a le Print to renale Books
2005: The Open Content Alliance (OCA) launches a world public digital library
2006: Microsoft launches Live Search Books as its own digital library
2006: The union catalog WorldCat goes online for free
2007: Citizendium is a main online ”reliable” cooperative encyclopedia
2007: The Encyclopedia of Life will document all species of animals and plants
[Unless specified otherwise, all quotations are excerpts from NEF interviews These interviews are available online at <http: etudes-francaisesnet=””>]
1968: ASCII
[Overview]
Used since the beginning of co, ASCII (Ae) is a 7-bit coded character set for inforlish It was published in 1968 by ANSI (American National Standards Institute), with an update in 1977 and 1986 The 7-bit plain ASCII, also called Plain Vanilla ASCII, is a set of 128 characters with 95 printable unaccented characters (A-Z, a-z, numbers, punctuation and basic sylish/American keyboard Plain Vanilla ASCII can be read, written, copied and printed by any simple text editor or word processor It is the only format compatible with 99 of all hardware and software It can be used as it is or to create versions in many other formats Extensions of ASCII (also called ISO-8859 or ISO-Latin) are sets of 256 characters that include accented characters as found in French, Spanish and German, for example ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1) for French
[In Depth (published in 2005)]
Whether digitized years ago or now, all Project Gutenberg books are created in 7-bit plain ASCII, called Plain Vanilla ASCII When 8-bit ASCII (also called ISO-8859 or ISO-Latin) is used for books with accented characters like French or Ger also produces a 7-bit ASCII version with the accents stripped (This doesn't apply for languages that are not ”convertible” in ASCII, like Chinese, encoded in Big-5)
Project Gutenberg sees Plain Vanilla ASCII as the best format by far
It is ”the lowest common denominator” It can be read, written, copied and printed by any simple text editor or word processor on any electronic device It is the only format compatible with 99 of hardware and software It can be used as it is or to create versions in many other formats It will still be used while other formats will be obsolete (or are already obsolete, like for devices launched since 1999) It is the assurance collections will never be obsolete, and will survive future technological changes
The goal is to preserve the texts not only over decades but over centuries There is no other standard as widely used as ASCII right now, even Unicode, a universal double-byte character encoding launched in 1991 to support any language and any platform
1971: PROJECT GUTENBERG
[Overview]
In July 1971, Michael Hart created Project Gutenberg with the goal ofavailable for free, and electronically, literary works belonging to public do was the first inforital library When the internet becaained an international dimension The nuust 1997) to 5,000 (in April 2002), 10,000 (in October 2003), 15,000 (in January 2005), 20,000 (in December 2006) and 25,000 (in April 2008), with a current production rate of around 340 new books each es and 40downloaded by the tens of thousands every day Project Gutenberg pro that a book can be copied, indexed, searched, analyzed and compared with other books Contrary to other formats, the files are accessible for low-bandwidth use TheeBooks is Distributed Proofreaders, conceived in October 2000 by Charles Franks to help in the digitizing of books from public domain
[In Depth (published in 2005, updated in 2008)]
The electronic book (eBook) is now 37 years old, which is still a short life co to the five and a half century print book eBooks were born with Project Gutenberg, created by Michael Hart in July 1971 to make available for free electronic versions of literary books belonging to public do was the first inforital library Long considered by its critics as i had 25,000 books in April 2008, with tens of thousands downloads daily To this day, nobody has done a better job of putting the world's literature at everyone's disposal, while creating a vast network of volunteers all over the world, without wasting people's skills or energy
During the first twenty years, Michael Hart himself keyed in the first hundred books, with the occasional help of others When the internet becaained an international dimension Michael still typed and scanned in books, but now coordinated the work of dozens and then hundreds of volunteers across many countries The nuust 1997) to 2,000 (in May 1999), 3,000 (in December 2000) and 4,000 (in October 2001)
37 years after its birth, Project Gutenberg is running at full capacity It had 5,000 books online in April 2002, 10,000 books in October 2003, 15,000 books in January 2005, 20,000 books in December 2006 and 25,000 books in April 2008, with 340 new books available per month, with 40 mirror sites ide, and with books downloaded by the tens of thousands every day
Whether they were digitized 30 years ago or digitized now, all the books are captured in Plain Vanilla ASCII (the original 7-bit ASCII), with the sa rules, so they can be read easily by anyon a PDA, a cellphone or an eBook reader Any individual or organization is free to convert them to different forht laws in the country involved
In January 2004, Project Gutenberg had spread across the Atlantic with the creation of Project Gutenberg Europe On top of its original es and cultures, with a nu to the sah electronic versions that can be used and reproduced indefinitely And, as a second step, the digitization of ies and sound, in the same spirit
1974: INTERNET
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