2.25 Million eBooks at World eBook Fair

The Fourth World eBook Fair will provide over 3 million digital items from July 4 - August 4, 2009. This includes approximately 2.25 million eBooks, with a further 1,000 new items being added per business day during the month long celebration of the birthday of eBooks. EBooks were first realized by Project Gutenberg on July 4, 1971 at the University of Illinois.

The first day of the Fair saw over 1 million downloads, including popular titles such as Jane Austen's "Emma," Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women," and Joseph Conrad's "Nostromo."

New high speed Internet connections and Web servers are in place to handle the vast reponse expected from the public, seeking free access to much of the world's great literature. This year, many readers will use their iPhones, Sony Readers, Kindles, MP3 players and a host of other devices, in addition to desktop and notebook computers.

New software and converstion programs have been in place for months of testing to encourage reading a book any time, any place, day and night, wherever people might want to read, research, or otherwise enjoy their library of eBooks at www.worldebookfair.org

"This is a fantastic use of the new $80 terabyte disk drives, as each terabyte will hold about 2.25 million compressed eBooks," says eBook inventor Michael S. Hart, co-founder of The World eBook Fair. "Never before has the common person had the ability to create their own `personal library,' just as a few decades ago common persons never had the capability of owning their own computer."

These sentiments are shared by John Guagliardo, of The World Public Library, who co-founded the Fair and supplies much of the infrastructure, websites, and support for The World eBook Fair. Guagliardo also hosts a .pdf eLibrary of Project Gutenberg content, online at http://www.gutenberg.cc/ and http://www.worldpublic.library/

Brewster Kahle, of The Internet Archive, has donateed an eLibrary of about 1.5 million eBooks to the effort and these can be found year round at http://www.archive.org/ . All told, over 2.25 million eBooks, and another half-million other items such as movies and audio recordings, will be available.

Another contributor to the World eBook Fair is EBooksAboutEverything, which has provided over 130,000 titles. When combined with content from other contributors, 2.25 million eBooks in myriad languages and formats will be available. These are readable on computers, cell phone, Kindles, and virtually every other device for displaying digital content.

The World eBook Fair is a celebration of freely available literature, accessible worldwide. These eBooks and other content will enrich, educate, and empower their readers.

Websites: http://http://www.gutenberg.org/
http://www.worldpubliclibrary.org/
http://www.ebooksabouteverything.com/
http://www.archive.org/details/texts