Public Domain Books Find Their Mirrors

Project Gutenberg's April 1997 page welcomes visitors and points them to websites, volunteers, supporters, and FTP mirror sites around the world. The headings include "Project Gutenberg on the Web" and "FTP mirror sites for Project Gutenberg."

This is not a polished library catalog. It is a distributed literary infrastructure. The page emphasizes mirrors because access depended on many hosts carrying the same public-domain texts.

Historically, Project Gutenberg matters because it made digitized books feel like a public project rather than a commercial product. Volunteers, mirrors, and plain-text files formed a network of cultural preservation and access.

The page captures a version of digital reading before e-readers and app stores. Literature travels by FTP, university servers, and volunteer-maintained sites. The dream is simple and enormous: books should move freely through the network.