Project Alexandria
The new Great Library
We have all heard tales of Amazon or other booksellers banning customers from their bookstores or censoring/editing purchased books. The famous Project Gutenberg, and similar organizations, are performing a good work, to help protect many of our precious books from this fate, but it is merely a centralized website and therefore not censorship resistant. Also, it mostly posts books in English or German.
So, we at 
GitCitadel have decided to move Project Gutenberg to Nostr and house it in the most distributed way possible: on relays. Specifically, our new, public Citadel relay for out-of-print books (and other documents), but also on any relay, anywhere.PABLOF7z
And, because we are a very humble group, we’re naming the effort “Alexandria”. And the first book to be printed on Nostr is the Bible because obviouslyNiel Liesmons.
Why on relays?
Well, why not on relays? Relays are one of the few widely-distributed databases for documentation in existence. The relay database spans the entire globe and anyone can maintain their own relay on their personal computer or mobile phone.
That means that anyone can house their own books. Which books are their own? Any books they have in their own possession. Any books someone would have to physically pry out of their cold, dead, computer.
Notes are perfect for publishing
Once we begin generating eBooks from notes with an associated header (which will be quite easy to do, so long as they are written in markdown or similar), they will also be readable, downloadable, and storable in ePub format (see Pandoc). And it is, after all, only a matter of time until someone enterprising makes an ePaper Nostr client for calmer reading of notes, and then you can download and read them, without having to bother converting beforehand, which maintains their Nostr-navigation.
The new event kind 30040 allows us to take any sort of note containing any sort of characters and create a type of “note collection” or “book of notes”, “journal of notes”, “magazine of notes”. And it can be nested or embedded in other notes, creating any sort of note-combination and note-hierarchy you can think of, only limited in size by the ability of your computer to processes the relationshipsNiel Liesmons.
Save the Zettels
The associated kind 30041 adds the prospect of breaking longer texts or articles up into sections or snippets (called “Zettel” in German). We can then collect or refer to particular bits of a longer text (like a chart, elegant paragraph or definition, data table), directly. Anyone can create such snippets, even of texts they didn’t write, as they can add a reference to the original publication in the tags of the new event.
This means we no longer have to “copy-paste” or quote other people’s works, we can simply tie them in. If we worry about them being deleted, we can fork them to create our own, digitally-linked version, and then tie that in. This means that source material can be tied to the new material, and you can trace back to the source easily (using Nostr IDs and tags, which are signed identifiers) and see who else is branching out from that source or discussing that source.
It’s gonna be HUGE!
We are making a big, beautiful library… and you are going to build it for us. Anyone, anywhere can therefore publish or republish any document they wish, with Nostr, and store it wherever they have a relay, and view it on any client willing to display it.PABLOF7z
You will own something and be happy.
Looking for comments…
Searching Nostr relays. This may take a moment the first time this article is opened.
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florian
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Great idea! Ideally we’ll get to a point where we can write a converter that transforms epub -> nostr and reverse nostr -> epub.
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Laeserin
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Highlighter now displays Kind 30040 and Kind 30041 events.
We can commence publishing.
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liminal 🦠
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We’re at the cusp of a cambrian explosion.
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liminal 🦠
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this is a good primer on what we’re trying to do.
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We’re calling it “Alexandria” because it’s going to be the new, greater library. And we’re starting with the Bible because obviously.
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Hiccups notwithstanding, this is a GREAT idea…
I can (unfortunately) envision a day when the Bible would be banned…but it can live forever on Nostr…
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liminal 🦠
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We’re bringing zettle styled publications to nostr.
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7fqx
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I know I keep banging on about it. But we (maybe it’s just me lol) need a proper nostr RSS reader 🤞🤞🤞
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7fqx
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nPub > ePub
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7fqx
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Boosted. I barely understand, but I know this is cool. Let’s get that Minecraft library thing on here somehow too:)
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MichaelJ
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No one in the comments has mentioned this yet, but this could be the new format for publishing and maintaining specifications and docs for Nostr software.
This could even replace the NIPs repo…
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liminal 🦠
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Composable release notes, referencing the source code for changes
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🦄Onigirl🐹🐉
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Can this be monetized?
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🦄Onigirl🐹🐉
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…I don’t know how to pandoc
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liminal 🦠
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m4dire0701
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Excellent initiative! And what about an integration with Anna’s Archive?
https://annas-archive.org/
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Laeserin
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No book more global, than the Bible. All-time best seller.
Proof of concept, as it has five levels, which is the maximum we will display in our client.
First book printed using moveable type, by Gutenberg.
Fits.
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Silberengel
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Anyone who is interested in finding out more about #Alexandria and what motivated us to invent kind 30040, can read this little essay, on the topic.
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Laeserin
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Hierarchical levels.
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Silberengel
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Silberengel
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https://next-alexandria.gitcitadel.eu/
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arkinox
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this is one of the best Other Stuff things happening on nostr
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Laeserin
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I agree.
I’m a bit frustrated, with us working on backend stuff and prototyping all day, instead of fixing the website. But it’ll be worth it.
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arkinox
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hang in there! the world needs you! 🫂
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Ghost Mode
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The first Alexandria burned. These guys are building a library that can’t. Nobody confiscates your books.
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sey ᓭᑫᐧᐢᑎᑳᐧᐣ
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Could this include the Health Rangers repository?
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Laeserin
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It can include whatever.
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Laeserin
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Update:
I’m currently in the process of moving the e-book file downloads and similar features to the new homepage prototype. The new HTTP relay is also integrated there and everything is being revamped and restyled for e-paper readers and low-bandwidth. Amber login also added, which is important for the e-paper use case (where you use the built-in browser and probably don’t have a browser extension to sign with).
Lots of tweaking and testing, ahead.
https://gitcitadel.imwald.eu
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Laeserin
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Woo woo! Signed that event above, sent from our website, with Amber. 💪🏻
Quotes and references
repost npub1...xmavz
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Silberengel
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Here is the original article, which defined the #Alexandria project.
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ish4k
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Laeserin
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Getting closer. #Alexandria https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/pull/1600
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m4dire0701
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ABH3PO
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IntuitiveGuy☯️
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Tim
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The Beave
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I think that some people don’t realize how big this will be…
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7fqx
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Laeserin
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mIX
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average_gary
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Magnus
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calva⚡️
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All roads lead to #Nostr.
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Derek Ross
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Marakesh 𓅦
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Dash
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Michael
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liminal 🦠
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tf
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