WorldWide Library

The Worldwide Library is a separate non profit organization that we established working with others, and incorporated as a non profit company limited by guarantee in the UK some years back.

The objective of this organization is to make books and information available to everyone, mostly in the form of ebooks. This is to be achieved by having a range of websites itself but encouraging others from libraries and schools to businesses to produce mirror image sites, to make the material more available.

This project is intended to be fully international and it from the start recognized that while in the developed world, a lot of what it will have available could have been obtained from other sources, while in some poorer families and in other parts of the world, these texts would not have been available at all.

So where has it got to

It has a range of websites, many at least partly developed.
a lot of experiments have been done using software to produce ebooks on various formats and a small number selected
It has manuscript source in electronic format for many hundreds of historic texts, novels, and other material that is out of copyright.
It has some later material that has come from New Atlantis publishing projects or other projects that can be converted to ebook format.
Some authors have undertaken to provide it with new unpublished material.
Some clubs have agreed to produce books on their topic for publishing in ebook format.
Background lists of book titles and authors has been produced.

It has had some problems to overcome

making sure that it does not breach copyright laws in various countries has presented a far greater challenge then expected. It may be users are just requested not to use texts from certain countries, where their local laws make the application of this not practical.
changes in the copyright laws has meant that some material that had gone out of copyright and into the public domain has since gone back in, and the exact status of different electronic texts is not clear.
identifying and getting feedback from copyright owners of works in copyright but out of print has been difficult, although most when eventually approached will allow the works to be used in the library.
sorting out how to fund the work, so far it has been done by volunteers who are mostly also involved in a range of other projects. A method of sponsorship was chosen and is detailed in the websites and it is thus or a modified version that is most likely to succeed. See also below.

Cooperation with other clubs and projects include

clubs making material available
clubs volunteering to produce manuscripts
archive publication texts being made available
photo library project will provide a supply of cover photos.
Writers Club International becoming more involved

So when will the ebooks start to become available

There is nothing stopping this happening at the moment, they have texts, cover photos available, all the software they need, and websites. Some factors around sponsorship are still being resolved and then books should start to become available. It may be worth checking from time to time that they have not started to appear, This page may become out of date.

The main website of the Worldwide Library is www.worlwide-library.com this index site links to all their specialist sites. They currently have 16 website addresses registered.

Mixing for profit and non profit together

Over recent years many organizations have found that working completely with volunteers is difficult so have switched instead to raising funds and commissioning work. The Worldwide Library likewise realizes that this is going to be necessary for faster progress top be made. In order to achieve this Self Build llc has been asked to develop and market a joint venture consortium, aimed a t developing a marketing operation to sell sponsorship and advertising. This operation will be given a contract to do this and a percentage share of the revenue raised, as well as involvement in some of the Worldwide Libraries activities.

To see this opportunity when announced keep a look out on www.property-club.org , the exchange site for joint venture consortium projects.