Project Gutenberg and e-books

As a part time librarian at Homai Special Formats Library I have been familiar with Project Gutenberg for some time as we sometimes need to refer blind and vision-impaired students to this site to access books they need for their studies. They can download them as audiobooks or as e-text if they have a screen enlarger or screen reading software, such as Jaws. It's great for classics but of course does not include anything not already in the public domain, so we still need a good supply of audio, braille and large print for the more recent books.

Project Gutenberg is a very useful site for a large number of people and there are many formats available for downloading, from Appleitunes Audiobook to HTML or plain text. It is interesting that many public libraries are now offering audio books for digital downloading as well - and these are current titles.

I had a look at the book, "The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English". It was interestingly old fashioned. In one section it was argued that a noble temperament could be seen in an individual by looking at the size and breadth of the forehead!