Project Gutenberg - Criticism

Criticism

The text is wrapped at 65-70 characters and paragraphs are separated by a double-line break. Although this makes the release available to anybody with a text-reader, a drawback of this format is the lack of markup and the resulting relatively bland appearance.

While the works in Project Gutenberg represent a valuable sample of publications that span several centuries, there are some issues of concern for linguistic analysis. Some content may have been modified by the transcriber because of editorial changes or corrections (such as to correct for obvious proof-setting or printing errors). The spelling may also have been modified to conform with current practices (although the intent by Project Gutenberg, and by Distributed Proofreaders, is to preserve the original text and where possible the formatting). This can mean that the works may be problematic when searching for older grammatical usage. Finally, the collected works can be weighted heavily towards certain authors (such as Charles Dickens), while others are barely represented.

In March 2004, a new initiative was begun by Michael Hart and John S. Guagliardo to provide low-cost intellectual properties. The initial name for this project was Project Gutenberg 2 (PG II), which created controversy among PG volunteers because of the re-use of the project's trademarked name for a commercial venture.