Brad De Long has written a brief look at the progress of Project Gutenberg. The piece nicely illustrates how dramatically the Internet has shifted expectations into high gear.
De Long writes,
Thus Project Gutenberg has inched ahead at a snail’s pace. In its 32nd year of existence, the collection has only 6,267 etexts.
Only 6,267 free etexts? Certainly it’s far short of its ultimate goal of 1 million online texts, but almost 6,300 online public domain books is still a pretty impressive accomplishment in my book (especially since it was accomplished with donated labor — there are quite a few publishing companies who don’t average 195 books a year over a 30 year period).
Moreover, De Long leaves out the important part of the story — that as scanning technology becomes more widely available and more people have come online, the number of books Project Gutenberg adds every year is accelerating quickly. For example, more than half of those 6,267 free etexts were added to Project Gutenberg in just the last two years. Based on that, I’d say Project Guenberg has a very bright future.