Attention MobileReaders! It is my distinct pleasure to announce that our book uploads section (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/ebooks.php?order=desc&sort=dateline) now has more than 2,000 uploads!

This is particularly impressive to me as it's a completely volunteer effort.

So please join me in a round of applause for the stalwarts who did all that formatting and uploading!


:clap: :clap:
:clap:...........:clap:
:clap:................:clap:
:clap:...........:clap:
:clap: :clap:

Here Here. As a recent member, it is one of the great things about the forum. The tech info would have been enough, but the books are a wonderful bonus. I have downloaded many books, and it is one of the things that keeps me coming back daily to check for new additions.

:yahoo::yahoo::yahoo::yahoo::dtw::jump::jump:

B2K!
Sounds like something you would get at Burger King. :)

Very cool. I've only downloaded & read a few of the books available so far, but will definitely read more & hope to contribute at some point.

Thank You to everyone who has made them available to the rest of us.

B2K!
Sounds like something you would get at Burger King. :)True, but what we have here is lower calorie and better for you. :wink2:

It really is amazing.

And I've learned about a lot of great books because of it also. Don't forget to read the descriptions provided. What a fantastic resource it has become.

How about some special recognition for the alltime top uploaders:
* RWood (505 books. His legendary formatting of the entire Harvard Classics series!)
* Patricia (429 books. Also the current leader in recent uploads.)
* HarryT (340 books. The initiator and force behind the whole concept.)
* Dr. Drib (240 books)
* Nate the Great (144 books)

as well as some of the newer stars appearing in the lists...
* Stanart
* JSWolf
* BenG

A screen shot of the Uploaders Hall of Fame is included to preserve the moment.

Thanks everyone!

I'm not sure how much our new members may appreciate what all this effort might mean for them. The day I bought my Sony, I had dreamy visions of downloading all of Project Gutenberg and carrying a fair fraction of all mankind's knowledge and wisdom with me everywhere. This was to be a monumental step-change in my life. The first thing I did was to download a book from there in TXT format, import and copy it to my Reader, and with great anticipation I sat down to enjoy it. I was instantly dismayed by how distracting it was to read with broken lines, forced hyphenation, poor pagination, and no indexing. I don't have to tell you what happened when I then tried PDF files from the Internet Archive. So the MR uploads are very helpful. Now that I'm working on my first conversions myself, I also appreciate the effort involved in doing a good job. Doing hundreds of books that way? Unthinkable. But thank you!! :) :) :)

How about some special recognition for the alltime top uploaders...

2000 books already? Thank you guys!!!!! :mrrox:

Dayyam, guys! :2thumbsup

Editor's Note: bowerbird graciously allowed us to move this post to its own thread, which can be found here (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15751).

Responding posts have also been moved there, please post future responses there too. :nice:

-- NatCh

and congratulations on the milestone number in your library!
a hearty thank-you to all the volunteers for their hard work!

-bowerbird

Congratulations to all those who format books for this site.:clap::bow2:

It had been a while since I took a look there. Bewildering is all I could find at the moment.

Just a note:
When that feature was started, classification by author and title was a good idea because no one had any inkling as of where this might all lead to. Going through all this searching does not seem the better way now. Would it not be still feasible to join the universal library cataloging systems at this time before it gets too time intensive to do so? Just imagine the confusion one could go through in five years when we reach 50,000 entries... And what of different languages?
@Alex, start shopping for new servers! :laugh4:

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I do appreciate the effort of these people!!!

Just a note:
When that feature was started, classification by author and title was a good idea because no one had any inkling as of where this might all lead to. Going through all this searching does not seem the better way now. Would it not be still feasible to join the universal library cataloging systems at this time before it gets too time intensive to do so? Just imagine the confusion one could go through in five years when we reach 50,000 entries... And what of different languages?
@Alex, start shopping for new servers! :laugh4:

I think he's right. The current list system is at the limits of its functionality. There are several authors with 40+ titles. We need a catalog system of some kind (with an index by author, subject, title).

And I join in with everybody else in saying:

Thank you

to all the uploaders for all the hard work you have put into this project.

Also, regarding the question of servers. Wouldn't it be cheaper to use bittorrent protocol to upload and host books. This way Mobileread server would be just one seeder out of many. While 2000 books maybe not that much of a burden on the server, what will happen when book count will reach 20,000?

A Wonderful Bent
----------------------------

Bent over a clay tablet punching it with a stylus . . .
Bent over a piece of parchment scractching it with pen and ink . . .
Bent over a type tray fixing a lead letter . . .
Bent over a computer inserting a ditigital file into a conversion program . . .

A long and very honorable tradition.

(I hope not too sacarin, but what I believe)

I think he's right. The current list system is at the limits of its functionality. There are several authors with 40+ titles. We need a catalog system of some kind (with an index by author, subject, title).

I am all up for suggestions ;)

I am not so much worried about server capacities. Downloads require bandwidth, but not so much CPU capacity. Bandwidth is not a problem as long as we can expand. And should there be a limit, we can also add new servers.

I am all up for suggestions ;)

I am not so much worried about server capacities. Downloads require bandwidth, but not so much CPU capacity. Bandwidth is not a problem as long as we can expand. And should there be a limit, we can also add new servers.

I can't give any suggestions because I don't know what index software systems are out there. Is there a developers forum where you can ask the question: "What indexers will interface with my forum format?"

I am willing to volunteer a couple hours a week to fill the index with the existing books.

This calls for extra karma all around.

I can't give any suggestions because I don't know what index software systems are out there. Is there a developers forum where you can ask the question: "What indexers will interface with my forum format?"

I am willing to volunteer a couple hours a week to fill the index with the existing books.

Thanks Nate. I'll come back to your offer ;) :2thumbsup

I can't give any suggestions because I don't know what index software systems are out there. Is there a developers forum where you can ask the question: "What indexers will interface with my forum format?"

I am willing to volunteer a couple hours a week to fill the index with the existing books.

I goofed on the question. What we need is some kind of document management system (DMS) or content management system (CMS). Here are a few possibilities:

http://www.opendocman.com/
http://www.epiware.com/
http://www.knowledgetree.com/

CMS info source: (Look here first!)
http://www.opensourcecms.com/index.php

There is a good chance that the last link will have something that will work for us.

Thanks for the links, Nate. I am looking at them right now.

While each of the tools has its individual advantages, I believe neither is particularly useful for our purposes. Note that a CMS can be any kind of software tool made to manage content. Our Wiki, for example, is also some of kind of CMS.

I have another suggestion: We extend the features in our forum, allowing users to enter various metadata along each thread of book uploads. Metadata can include author name, book title, publishing date, etc. We can then use this metadata to enhance our e-book download repository. It would mean more "hand work", but it would better integrate with the rest of this side and it would keep it as lean as possible.

Entering the metadata was one of the things I had in mind when I posted this:

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14754

You know, the main thing that prevents me from being recognized for my genius is a really bad habit of expressing a thought before I complete it.

You know, the main thing that prevents me from being recognized for my genius is a really bad habit of expressing a thought before I complete it.

*GRIN* ;)