Publisher:Project Gutenberg
This page is for noting Bibliographic and other issues with works published by Project Gutenberg.
Please use the talk page to discuss procedures, while this page documents currently accepted or recommended procedures.
Project Gutenberg's Wikipedia article.
Listing as publisher
When we enter as a publication of a work an etext from Project Gutenberg, we list the publisher as "Project Gutenberg", considering that such an etext forms a new and separate edition of the work. -DES Talk 10:42, 6 Feb 2008 (CST)
Etext number
All Project Gutenberg works are identified by an "etext number" which is a persistent identifier. Moreover, given the etext number, a canonical URL can be automatically generated (for etext nnnnn it is "http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/nnnn"). Please enter this in the "Catalog ID" field. Enter a work with etext number 12345 as "#12345" (just an example) without including the label "etext". -DES Talk 10:42, 6 Feb 2008 (CST)
Separate publication
In many cases, particularly for SF, Project Gutenberg publishes an individual work of short fiction as a separate etext, often scanned from the original magazine version. Please enter these publications as chapterbooks. -DES Talk 10:42, 6 Feb 2008 (CST)
Price field
Please enter 0 for the price. There is discussion on going as to whether to use a currency symbol (as "$0.00" or "L0.00") or not, see the talk page for the discussion.
Tags
As discussed in Tags for Gutenberg titles, User:Swfritter, User:DESiegel60 and some others have been adding user tags to titles which exist in Project Gutenberg editions. This effort is using only 26 distinct tags: all PG pubs by authors whose last name begins with A get the tag "pga", all PG pubs by authors whose last name begins with B get the tag "pgb", and so on. This is in effect a hack to provide a search by publisher/author for PG titles only.
Pages fields
In most cases, the page number fields and all fields for page count of the work are left blank for Project Gutenberg publications.
Placeholders
It has been suggested that for an ebook collection or anthology "placeholder" page numbers of 1, 2, 3... be entered to preserve the order of the contents, but there is not yet any consensus on this. Other users have suggested using "10, 20, 30..." instead, to allow for possible later insertions. Some users are now entering such "placeholders", when, and only when, it seems to them that the order of the items in a work is significant to the overall effect of the work.
Discussion on whether, and if so how, to make this a common practice is in progress.
Actual page numbers
In some cases, the HTML version of a project Gutenberg text includes indications of page numbers, normally matching those in the source text fairly closely. (The practice seems to be becoming more common in recent PG editions.) In such cases, please treat these just as if they were physical page numbers in a printed volume.
Binding field
Please enter the binding as "ebook" -DES Talk 14:52, 6 Feb 2008 (CST)
Formats
Project Gutenberg etexts are always made available in a pure ASCII format. Frequently other formats, such as HTML, Plucker, and the like are also available for a given text. Please include an entry in the notes field documenting the formats available for a given etext. For example: "This ebook is available in ASCII and HTML formats". -DES Talk 15:18, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
Link
Please include a link to the actual Project Gutenberg edition in the notes field. For example:
This ebook edition is available in HTML, ASCII, and iso-8859-1 formats as <a HREF="http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/20836">Ebook #20836</a>.
The link should as in the example, go to the root page for the etext, rather than to any of the actual texts. the root page is always at an address like "http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/nnnn", where "nnnn" is the etext number. -DES Talk 15:18, 28 April 2008 (UTC)