In every home there ought to be books that are friends. In every day, at least in every week, there ought to be some time which can be spent in cultivating their friendship...You need not be any one's enemy; but you need not be a friend with everybody. This is as true of books as of persons. For friendship some agreement in temperament is quite essential.

Lyman Abbott, 1922
The Guide to Reading: The Pocket University Volume XXIII from Project Gutenberg.

Project Gutenberg is the Internet's oldest (and still the best) producer of free electronic books (often called eBooks). Project Gutenberg is the brainchild of Michael Hart, who in 1971 decided that it would be a really good idea if lots of famous and important texts were freely available to everyone in the world. Since then, he has been joined by hundreds of volunteers who share his vision. Now, more than thirty years later, Project Gutenberg houses over 6000 complete electronic versions important literature and scientific texts. Project Gutenberg features materials in over 20 languages and in dozens of formats, and has a goal of making one million free eBooks available online by early in the next decade. From 1991 to today, Project Gutenberg had managed to double its production of free eBooks every 18 months.

The Open Book Project is aimed at the educational community and seeks to encourage and coordinate collaboration among students and teachers for the development of high quality, freely distributable textbooks and educational materials on a wide range of topics. The advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web are making collaboration among educators on a global scale possible for the first time. The OBP wants to harness this exciting technology to promote learning and sharing.

The Internet Poetry Archive makes available selected poems from a number of contemporary poets. The goal of the project is to make poetry accessible to new audiences (at little or no cost) and to give teachers and students of poetry new ways of presenting and studying these poets and their texts. The archive includes the work of living poets from around the world. The initial unit features eight poets, including Philip Levine and Nobel Prize winners Seamus Heaney and Czeslaw Milosz. Using the newest capabilities of the Internet to present sound and graphics as well as text, the archive entry for each poet comprises audio clips of the poet reading several poems, the poet's comments on the works, a photograph of the poet and any other graphics that would help a reader understand the poem (e.g., a map or illustration of a particular place mentioned in the poem), texts of the poems, a critical biography of the poet prepared by a scholar familiar with the poet's work, and a short bibliography. Poems are presented in their original languages, as well as in English translation.

The Library of Southern Literature documents the riches and diversity of the United States' Southern experience as presented in one hundred of its most important literary works. The goal of the Library of Southern Literature is to make one hundred of the most important works of Southern literature available for teaching and research. Southerners comprise one third of the U.S. population, but only recently have scholars and the general public begun to explore fully the riches and diversity of Southern experience. The texts for the Library of Southern Literature come primarily from the Academic Affairs Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Southern Historical Collection is one of the largest collections of Southern manuscripts in the country, while the North Carolina Collection provides the most complete printed documentation of a single state anywhere.

Wikinfo, also known as the Internet-Encyclopedia, is an international project to create a universal open content encyclopedia. The site was launched in July, 2003, and there are currently 24,643 Wikinfo articles, with Wikipedia articles available via XML import. Inspired by Wikipedia, Wikinfo differs in a number of ways, notably in editorial policy. At Wikinfo, the main article on any subject is written from a sympathetic point of view.

They tried to tell you it was bad for you, that series fiction was uninspired and that it retarded intellectual growth. But you didn't listen, you rebel, you. You read on, one Sweet Valley High or Nancy Drew after the other. And maybe, just maybe, you kept reading. Long after the other kids had sold their well thumbed copies at yard sales, you guiltily checked out Sweet Valley University from the library. You think that maybe you should be reading something "better", but you just can't get into War and Peace this year. Series touches you more than any classic; but no one wants to hear it. Who will stand up for the body of literature that unites you with countless others?
Enter. . . The Series Zealot.

A little closer to home, and in the spirit of this month's theme, we wanted to give you a little advance notice of the 2004 Carrboro Poetry Festival, happening Saturday June 5 and Sunday June 6 at the Carrboro Century Center in Carrboro, North Carolina. The 2004 Carrboro Poetry Festival will feature readings from 40 poets during the two day event, including renowned local authors Andrea Selch, Faulkner Fox, Olufunke Moses, Jaki Shelton Green, Jeffrey Beam, John Balaban, Lou Lipsitz, shirlette ammons, and Steven Katz. They will read their poetry along with some of America's finest younger poets--Brian Henry (editor of Verse and founder of Verse Press), Linh Dinh (anthologized in Best American Poetry 2000 and the editor and co-translator of Night Again: Contemporary Fiction from Vietnam), K. Silem Mohammad (founder of the Flarf movement and author of Deer Head Nation), and Lee Ann Brown (Charlotte native and winner of the New American Poetry Prize). Admission is free.