Project Gutenberg gives away three million books a week from just one single site, ibiblio.org at the University of North Carolina.

Project Gutenberg books are usually easy to print, for those who prefer to sacrifice our forests for reading.

I am sure that the mass of people felt the same way at the time Gutenberg Press books replaced hand manuscripts, when paper replaced parchment and papyrus and even when clay tablets replaced stone tablets. People always have resisted change.

However, there is a certain advantage, particularly to students who may have to buy a hundred pounds of books every semester, to being able to carry libraries on your keychain or necklace, whether it be a library of books or a library of maps in a GPS or a national phonebook. When it comes to owning entire libraries, it's easier if they are eBooks.

In many countries, eBooks are like cell phones, just a skip over one technology to another and for those who prefer to avoid the expense of hardware. Only a small percentage of the world population can afford books the way we do, or can afford land line telephones. By end of the year, half of the potential world market will have a working cell phone, while the majority of the world will still never have made a land line phone call. It is going to be a similar story with paper books vs. eBooks. It is better to light a single candle than curse the dark.

Michael S. Hart, Founder

Project Gutenberg

Urbana, Ill.

hart@pglaf.org