I'm very sad to announce that Dr. Gregory B. Newby (gbnewby) has died after a short battle with cancer. Dr. Newby was CEO of the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation for more than 20 years and, in that role, worked very closely with Distributed Proofreaders. He was also a voting member of the Distributed Proofreader Foundation board.

Born in Canada, Dr. Newby grew up in the US. He returned to Canada, however, to work for the government in the Yukon Territory as he continued his direction of Project Gutenberg.

In a recent interview, Greg described how he, a life-long reader, became excited about the possibilities of ebooks back in 1987 when someone emailed him a copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland -- "I immediately realized what a tremendous thing that was." He cared deeply about Project Gutenberg's mission. "You know," he told the podcast interviewer, "That keeps me going ... having a positive impact and getting all that literature into people's hands."

In 2023, Dr. Newby collaborated with Microsoft and MIT to produce the Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection of AI-narrated audiobooks. This initiative was named one of "The Best Inventions of 2023" by TIME magazine.

Greg's vision saw the ebooks (many of them produced here at Distributed Proofreaders) made available through Project Gutenberg grow to more than 75,000.

Dr. Newby and his tireless leadership of Project Gutenberg was a close partner of Distributed Proofreaders and will be greatly missed here.

The official announcement is here.