A Sad Note - the death of who was perhaps the first online librarian

A Sad Note - the death of who was perhaps the first online librarian - Michael Hart

Michael Hart, the founder of Project Gutenberg and who started with ebooks by typing up the US Declaration of Independence into a computer and sharing it back in 1971, has died this week. From that first document we today have Project Gutenburgs around the world in multiple countries. Today his project, Project Gutenberg, has over 36,000 ebooks available in 60 languages. The number at PG isn't the real impact though, by his leadership in creating the free public domain online library we now actually have over five million ebooks available online.

Early this year Michael wrote: “One thing about eBooks that most people haven’t thought much is that eBooks are the very first thing that we’re all able to have as much as we want other than air.” So as you see people with Kindles, Nooks, or other e-readers you are seeing the impact today of what that first ebook created back in 1971.

So as we say goodbye to Michael Hart, we should also say thank you, you will be missed.

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