(If you arrived at this page by selecting the
Help link on a Bibliographic Record page,
please use your Web browser's Back function
to return to the Bibliographic Record page.)
One of the best ways to find a Project Gutenberg eBook is to
use a Bibliographic Record page. Several functions on our main
find page bring you to a Bibliographic Record.
We call these Bibliographic Record pages
"BIBREC" for short. This help page gives a little more background
on the uses and limitations of the BIBREC page.
BIBREC Basic Facts
- BIBRECs are automatically generated every morning (US
Eastern Time). Generally, a new eBook from today will have a
BIBREC by tomorrow.
- BIBRECs are built from combining a listing of all available
eBook files with a database of book information (such as author
and title), along with information from the files themselves
and the GUTINDEX.ALL file.
- BIBRECs include all available information about the eBook,
including author, title, language, Project Gutenberg eBook #,
and other items. Not all information is available for every
eBook, and new information is added all the time.
- BIBRECs offer a listing of known files, along with the type
and several choices for where to get it from. This listing is
not always complete for some formats (such as RTF), but is
usually complete for plain text and HTML.
BIBREC Features
- The mirror option in the Download list
allows you to select which location to download a file from.
Because the main distribution choice (the iBiblio server in
North Carolina) might not be the best one for you, selecting a
mirror could provide a faster download.
- The p2p option supports the Magnetlink
standard to allow you to find a file on a peer to peer network
such as Kazaa or Limewire. While this might not be the fastest
download option in some cases, it offers the benefit of putting
the Project Gutenberg eBooks you download into a directory
where other p2p users can access it. Also, a "friendly"
filename is specified, to make it easier to keep track of your
Project Gutenberg eBooks.
- For more information about Magnetlinks, see http://www.magnetlinks.org/
- For more information about Project Gutenberg's
encouragement of peer to peer (p2p) file sharing for free
eBooks, see the p2p
HOWTO
- Generally, files may be downloaded via either HTTP or FTP
from any mirror. However:
- Some mirrors have chosen to not supply some file types,
i.e., .mp3. Others offer the .zip versions only.
- Our CD & DVD images might not work by HTTP due to
the file size.
- Most mirrors update daily, but sometimes new eBooks
take a little extra time to be harvested by mirrors.
