Michael Hart

By ADAM COHEN

OCCUPATION Computer consultant, founder of Project Gutenberg

GOAL To create a global Internet library of literature and reference works

QUOTE "We want to break down the bars of ignorance and illiteracy"

In the 1970s, when access to computers was limited and expensive, Michael Hart's pals at the University of Illinois computer lab gave him what amounted to $100 million worth of free computer time. Hart, son of a Shakespeare professor and a mathematician, decided to harness the new technology to humanistic ends by posting a copy of the Declaration of Independence that anyone with a computer and a modem could read for free.

Hart called his fledgling Internet site Project Gutenberg. Since then, with less than $100,000 in foundation money and 1,000 volunteers worldwide who hunt down books, type or scan them in and proofread, he has assembled a library of 2,250 entries. Go to www.gutenberg.net and you will find an eclectic array of works in the public domain, ranging from the Bible to Alice in Wonderland; from the Divine Comedy in Italian to Heimskringla, or the Chronicle of the Kings of Norway, translated from Old Norse.

Hart, 52, who never finished grad school, runs the site from his Urbana home, adding 30 to 40 books a week. Next he hopes to start entering works of art and music. Hart contends that free books over the Internet will shake up civilization in the 21st century even more than Johannes Gutenberg's movable type did in the 15th. "Democracy," he says, "is dependent on people knowing enough to make a choice."

--By Adam Cohen