Readify

Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

David Copperfield

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is the nonprofit educational corporation established in 2001 to provide a secure and permanent future for Project Gutenberg and for future generations. In the book’s end matter, it appears both as an organization with a stated long-term purpose and as a legally constituted body with offices, people, and a dedicated section on donations.

Founding and purpose

The end matter dates the Foundation’s creation to 2001 and connects it directly to the future of Project Gutenberg. Its stated purpose is to provide a secure and permanent future for the collection and for later generations. Nearby text also refers to ensuring that the Project Gutenberg collection will remain freely available, placing continued public access alongside institutional continuity as a concern of the Foundation’s presentation.

This formulation gives the organization a custodial role: its stated work is oriented not merely toward the collection’s present existence, but toward its durability over time. The text does not detail the Foundation’s programs or explain how it carries out that responsibility, so its account is principally one of purpose rather than method.

Legal and educational status

The Foundation describes itself as a nonprofit 501(c)(3) educational corporation, organized under the laws of Mississippi and granted tax-exempt status. These details establish its formal legal identity in the United States and distinguish its stated educational, nonprofit character from that of a commercial enterprise.

The end matter presents this information in a section specifically devoted to the Foundation. Its legal form and tax status are therefore part of the reader-facing account of the institution, alongside the purpose of securing Project Gutenberg’s future. The text supplies these organizational facts but does not name individual officers or explain internal governance.

Offices and people

The Foundation’s principal office is listed at 4557 Melan Drive South, Fairbanks, Alaska, 99712. The same passage distinguishes this office from the organization’s dispersed workforce: its volunteers and employees are scattered across numerous locations. The account thus gives a fixed point of institutional contact while describing its people as geographically distributed.

The end matter also begins to identify a business office, but the available passage does not give its address. It does not specify how responsibilities are divided between the principal and business offices, or describe the day-to-day work of the volunteers and employees. What it establishes is the contrast between a named principal location and a wider distribution of personnel.

Donations and institutional continuity

A separate section is devoted to information about donations to the Foundation. Its placement connects financial contributions to the organization’s account of its work, while the surrounding material presents the Foundation as a means of securing a lasting future for Project Gutenberg. The excerpt introduces the donation discussion by stating that Project Gutenberg depends on broad support, but the surviving text ends before completing that statement; it does not provide enough detail here to describe particular fundraising methods or donation procedures.

Across these end-matter notices, the Foundation is defined through continuity: a 2001 founding, a stated commitment to a secure and permanent future, formal nonprofit and educational status, and an explicit place for donation information. The account is concise and institutional, offering basic facts about purpose, legal standing, and location rather than a fuller history or description of operations.