New Job: Project Gutenberg

Personal Note, January 1 2026: I have a new job: Executive Director of the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Here's what I wrote for PG's January Newsletter.

Greetings from the new Executive Director

Happy Public Domain Day! You might hear people say that books published in 1930 have "fallen" into the US Public Domain, or, that they have lost copyright "protection". This is not quite correct. Rather, books published in 1930 have been FREED of copyright restrictions. They have ASCENDED into the public domain and into the embrace of organizations like Project Gutenberg. They now belong to ALL of us, and we need to take care of them for future generations.

On October 21, Project Gutenberg lost its longtime leader, Greg Newby, to pancreatic cancer. I had agreed to step up as Acting Executive Director so that Project Gutenberg could continue the mission that had become Greg's life work: to serve and preserve public domain books so that all of us can use and enjoy them without restrictions. Although I've been doing development work for Project Gutenberg for the past 8 years, I did not really understand what Greg's job entailed, or how many tasks he had been juggling. Three months in, I'm still discovering mysterious-to-me aspects of the organization. I've also been amazed at the dedication and talent of the many volunteers behind Project Gutenberg and our sister organization, Distributed Proofreaders. And at the large number of donors who make the organization financially viable and sustainable. So as of 2026, with your support, I'm continuing as Executive Director.

In the past three months Project Gutenberg has proven to be resilient; we took a heavy blow and managed to keep going. My top priority going forward is to make Project Gutenberg even more sustainable as well as resilient. In other words, my job is be one runner in a relay race: take the baton and make sure I get it to the next runner. That's what we all have to do with public domain books, too. We want them to still be there in 50 years! Whether you're already a volunteer or booster, an avid reader, or just someone curious about what we do, I hope you'll help us pass that baton.