Before Google Books there was Project Gutenberg, which placed tens of thousands of texts on the internet. Alberto Manguel lamented that many of the texts were duplicates, and many more were unreliable, “having been hastily scanned and badly checked for typographical errors.” Paul Duguid noticed another problem of curation. While in many ways Project Gutenberg resembled—and even improved upon—a traditional, analogue library, it also resembled “a church jumble-sale bookstall, where gems and duds are blessed alike by the vicar because all have been donated.”
