Bouncing around the backroads of rural Uganda is a four-wheel drive diesel van loaded with a PC, a laser printer, a paper cutter, and a hot-melt glue binding machine. That van, the Digital Bookmobile, will put 5,000 books into schools, homes and libraries in an impoverished area of Uganda.
"So where do all these books come from? First and foremost, from the public domain collections on the Internet Archive. The Archive boasts more than 30,000 public domain works freely available for download, printing and other uses. One hundred thousand works will be available by the end of 2004. In Uganda, classic books like "The Tale of Peter Rabbit," "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," and "The Wizard of Oz" are filling school libraries.
"In addition, the project is funding two scanning stations at the National Library offices in Kampala, where operators will scan AIDS education, farming improvement, adult literacy, and other materials for the Bookmobile to print. All these materials will also be made available on the Internet Archive."
(Thanks, Brad!)







