Project Gutenberg Reader Web Site Launch

By Planet eBook Editor
September 9, 2001

Project Gutenberg Reader (www.pgreader.com) has launched version 1.0 of its eBook site. The free site is designed to improve the readability of the eTexts by displaying them in HTML and through your Web browser. The site lets users download the Project Gutenberg eText file, read online in a Web browser and even buy a paper version at Amazon or Chapters.

Project Gutenberg Reader

Some of the features of the site include:

  • the ability to change font face and size used to display eTexts
  • bookmarking
  • navigating to specific pages, as well as shortcut keys for moving backwards and forwards
  • Best Rated, Most Popular, Most Recently Added rating systems
  • search for eBook by Title or Author

Planet eBook recently spoke to Paul Mennega, the person who designed, developed, maintains and updates the site (he calls a labour of love), about the latest release and what his visitors can expect to see in the coming months. Paul is keen to hear what you think of his site and how you think he can make it even better. Here's what Paul had to say to our questions:

Q.1 - What made you start Project Gutenberg Reader?

I started the PG Reader shortly after discovering Project Gutenberg. I am an avid reader, and was fascinated by the scope of the project. Having thousands of literary classics available to me for free seemed almost to good to be true. I started reading the project's etext files immediately, but found them cumbersome to deal with. I then tried a few of the fine stand-alone readers as well, but found that while these were fine at home, they weren't close enough to a 'Book' in that I could bring them with me. Stand-alone readers require you to download the sometimes large Etext files to your local machine, which can be a problem for those on slow connections, or who want to read the same etext from different locations. This is when I decided that I should design an interface that would allow the user to read the Etext files from anywhere, using standard HTML through their browser.

Q.2 - How long have I been working on the Reader?

I started working on the PG Reader in September of 2000. I designed it simply for my own use at first, but realized in the coming months that there may be interest from people in such a useful tool. In Feb 2001, I registered the domain and opened the PG Reader to the public.

I work on this project alone at this time. My site has no banner ads (too much of an annoyance), so there is no incoming revenue to speak of. I have received a number of helpful suggestions from site users that have greatly enhanced the site, and I encourage everyone to contact me if they have any suggestions or comments. They are all appreciated!

Q.3 - How many Etext files?

As the site is nearing the completion of it's beta phase, the number of Etext files available will grow exponentially. While there are only 50 or so available currently, in the next month I am planning on adding the entire Gutenberg collection, which numbers in the thousands.

Q.4 - New features

In the next week, I will be adding support for full-text search of the eText files. This will enable users to find the exact quote or entry they need. With the PG Reader's bibliographical functions, this will be a powerful research tool, all available at no cost. Also, as mentioned above, I will be adding the complete Project Gutenberg Etext collection within the month. I am also currently working on a significant improvement to the reader that will allow the user to navigate not only by the current page-by-page system, but also by the Chapters within the selected eText.

Finally, once the full collection of etext files are available, I plan to survey the user-base to see if having a login feature to the site is something that they would use/want. Possibly a place to organize their bookmarks on-line (instead of the currently supported browser bookmarks).

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