LarrySanger.org

Can you hold 69,020 books in one hand?

You can, if you have a ZWIBook flash drive. Version 1.1 out now!

You can get all those books on a flash drive for a $50 donation to the 501(c)(3) Knowledge Standards Foundation. $100 for a signed, numbered copy. The glowing reviews are in!

First posted, September 19, 2024; v1.1 announced here, November 19, 2024.

If you are reading this blog, you are a certifiable smart person and probably know about Project Gutenberg (PG). They have been collecting digital editions of public domain books since Michael S. Hart first typed in the Declaration of Independence and posted it online in 1971. Since then, the project has added free books at an increasing rate, passing the 70,000 mark this year.

If they’re online, why make these books available on a thumb drive?

It’s a massive library in your pocket. With almost 70,000 local copies of books, it’s pretty darned cool to know that, as long as you have this drive, you will be able to access all those books, even in a nuclear Armageddon. The fact that you can search and read the books, and highlight and take notes on them, on any computer with the drive just makes it better.

Anti-censorship. We are preserving knowledge—future-proofing culture, you might say—in the face of the very real threat of censorship. Having many copies of these thumb drives, with almost 70,000 digitally signed book files, helps us as a society to guarantee that these books will never disappear. You can participate in this preservation effort!

It’s a backup of Western civilization.

AI concerns. Our world is increasingly having to deal with AI-generated text, which makes it possible for unscrupulous people to counterfeit data. Your copy of the Project Gutenberg library is a massive trove of human-written content; the fact that the books are stored offline means your copies are stable and unchanging; and the digitally-signed ZWI format proves they are reliable.

Support the 501(c)(3) nonprofit Knowledge Standards Foundation. Free knowledge is what the Internet is for, as far as I’m concerned. In the mission for free knowledge, PG preceded Wikipedia and, more recently, the Knowledge Standards Foundation, which is collecting all the free encyclopedic data into a single open network, the Encyclosphere. The KSF received FUTO‘s first “legendary grant,” for which we’re grateful. These funds are almost gone, however. So we made the drives as a mission-aligned fundraising tool.

Hey, this software is actually good! The reviews are in, and everybody loves ZWIBook. I wrote the software myself…well, ChatGPT and I did. But I am a stickler for testing, so there are hardly any bugs. I put in the time needed to make this software delightful to use. Title search is fast and works well. The category feature is useful. The bookshelf lets you highlight particular books in the library and track your reading history.

Can you read the books on your phone, tablet, or ereader? Not straight from the drive, but yes—even without an internet connection, you can export the books. Then just send them to your phone and you’re reading your personal copy.

And as far as the reader itself goes, it works well: font choice and size, page zoom, bookmarks, highlighting and notes, find-on-page, and research tools (like submitting text to translate and to chatbots for comment). In my tests, the files looked consistently good—sometimes better than the Project Gutenberg originals.

Should be great for:

  • Students
  • Teachers
  • Scholars
  • As a gift

I worked with Larry to help make Project Gutenberg contents available for the ZWIBook flash drive, and I’m very pleased with the outcome. One of the goals of Project Gutenberg is for individuals to have access to all literature and all the world’s knowledge. One of the ways of helping that happen is for people to have their own library – in their pockets, on their computers and mobile devices – and be able to share it. The ZWIBook Flash Drive does this: You get a massive personal library that you can read, annotate, and share. The collection is nicely done, with a helpful interface. The software gives you capabilities to search and use the library.

—Dr. Greg Newby, Director and CEO of Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, and owner of #26.

Where to order. Go to shop.encyclosphere.org to get yours!

The unsigned $50 version.

by

Larry Sanger

“Internet Knowledge Organizer.” Currently President of the Knowledge Standards Foundation, started Wikipedia and various other educational and reference sites. Ph.D., Philosophy, Ohio State, 2000. [read more]

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Comments

Please do dive in (politely). I want your reactions!

11 responses to “Can you hold 69,020 books in one hand?”

  1. Keith Bates

    Hi Larry
    This sounds wonderful!
    Is the software dependent on particular operating systems? The real question i am asking is does it work on Linux?

    Reply
    1. Larry Sanger

      I developed it on Ubuntu so I have the most evidence that it works well on Linux. I did, however, many hours testing and doing the builds for Windows and Mac, so I am confident it works well on all the main OSes.

      Reply
      1. Keith Bates

        Excellent! Thank you.

        Reply
  2. Bradley Kane

    Nuclear Armageddon? With all due respect, most flash drives have a life expectancy of about ten years when kept in good condition. And they are just as susceptible to EMP damage as many other electronic devices. The editing capabilities of the software on this flash drive sound interesting, but these drives have never been regarding as a useful tool for long-term data storage and nothing in the product description suggests any great improvements in the durability of this flash drive.

    I can see this product appealing to certain people, but I would encourage anybody who decides to purchase one to at least donate a few dollars directly to Project Gutenberg as well. And remember that a the Project’s founder Michael Hart believed that these classic titles “should be as free as the air we breathe.”

    Reply
    1. Larry Sanger

      Yes—getting the books in many independent digital copies helps spread the word through all sorts of bad times. It isn’t really a matter of surviving EMPs. The reference to nuclear Armageddon is tongue—in-cheek but decentralizing the archives of western civilization seems like a good idea to many.

      I agree that donating to PG is a good idea.

      The value proposition is clearer to non-techies: this is a good way to get usable offline copies of a library’s worth of books into the hands of the people with a minimum of fuss.

      Reply
  3. mmg

    Can you list which devices the flash drives are compatible with?

    Reply
    1. Larry Sanger

      Computers: Windows, Mac, and Linux. Developed on Linux, extensively tested on the others.

      You should be able to access the ZWI files from a USB-C port on a mobile device, but they frankly won’t do you much good until somebody writes a mobile app…which I’m thinking of doing. Depends on how popular it is.

      UPDATE: you can now, within the software itself, export to EPUB, which you can then put on your phone or tablet.

      Reply
  4. toxicworld_hq

    Hi Dr. Sanger.
    I saw this project and it looks interesting. I may order this one day: are you planning on loading the flash drive with more books?

    Reply
    1. Larry Sanger

      There is a version 1.1 but no more books will fit on these drives. I do want to sell massive hard drives filled with many more books, but some rich person or org needs to pay me to compile this and make them available to the world.

      Reply
  5. mike stevens

    Dear Larry, We met briefly at COSM 24, and I thoroughly support your endeavour, especially with the provision of curation of content based on the preservation of knowledge and skills, and not politics and postures. To those who bought the absolute necessity of this work, ask yourself this question:- Do I have life insurance, and do I have Way of Life insurance? If your answer is yes to the first part, why not yes to the second part?

    And as to durability of the storage medium, we can make up to 128 Terabytes of storage on one chip in miniSD Express format, with heat sinks and EMI/EMP protection. They can even be rad hardened for space applications, and they are becoming incredibly cheap per terabyte.
    Keep going Larry, this is a heroic venture. -Mike Stevens

    Reply
    1. Larry Sanger

      Thanks, Mike, and good to hear from you. It’s a good idea. But the development + marketing cost of this might be prohibitive for us. We’ve made some money with the flash drives, but not enough to pay me enough to make it worth my while to continue. A second similar project would probably need charitable support, to be honest. But I’m not ruling it out. How much do these drives cost? And are they actually available now?

      Reply

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