60,000 public domain books can fit on a flashdrive
There are still parts of the world where access to the global internet
is limited. Rural parts of world from Alaska to Africa to Asia have
bandwidth to that is unevenly distributed. Governments regularly cut off
website and apps access to their residents, with education often a
collateral damage.
There is and will always be a need for offline access to online resources.
Project Gutenberg <https://gutenberg.org/> is a 48 year old organization
whose mission is to make public domain works available for free on the
internet. For the past two years, the Free Ebook Foundation has been
working with Project Gutenberg to improve their website and
ebook-building infrastructure. Kiwix has been developing content modules
for some time now to facilitate their distribution effort. It was only a
matter of time for these two orgs to meet and plan mischief together.
Together with a team of computer-science seniors from Steven Institute
of Technology <https://www.stevens.edu/>, and building on our
development work with Project Gutenberg, the Free Ebook Foundation
undertook to improve the usability and currency of Kiwix-developed
Gutenberg content modules. The students added bookshelf functionality to
the modules, and helped to streamline the process of module creation.
These enhanced content modules are available today on the Kiwix website
– a list is available <https://ebookfoundation.org/openzim.html> on the
Free Ebook Foundation website, along with links to a demo site and the
software used to create the content modules.
USB flash drives that can store 128GB of data are can be found for as
low as $20 on most online stores – that’s more than enough storage for
all 60,000+ books.
About the Free Ebook Foundation
The Free Ebook Foundation <https://ebookfoundation.org> is a 501(c)3 New
Jersey non-profit corporation. The Free Ebook Foundation envisions a
world where ebooks will be funded, distributed and maintained for the
benefit of all, by coordinating the efforts and resources of many.
About Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg <http://www.gutenberg.org/> was the first provider of
free electronic books. Its mission is to encourage the creation and
distribution of eBooks. Thousands of volunteers digitized and diligently
proofread the eBooks, for enjoyment and education.
About Kiwix
Kiwix is an offline reader for online content like Wikipedia, Project
Gutenberg, or TED Talks. It makes knowledge available to people with no
or limited internet access. The software as well as the content is free
to use for anyone. Kiwix is a non-profit organisation and is based in
Switzerland. Our software is open-source available for free. The work we
do is partially provided by volunteers, partially funded by individual
donations, and grants from foundations.
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Kiwix - Wikipedia Offline & more
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https://kiwix.org/
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* Wiki:
https://wiki.kiwix.org/