Project Laurens Janszoon Coster is a collection of Dutch high literature on the web. Its name is sometimes abbreviated to Project Laurens Jansz. Coster or simply Project Coster. It is named after Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books...

 and after Laurens Janszoon Coster

Laurens Janszoon Coster

Laurens Janszoon Coster , or Laurens Jansz Koster, is the name of an inventor of a printing press from Haarlem...

, an early European printer, of whom it is doubtful whether he actually existed.

Project Coster was run by Marc van Oostendorp. It was started on June 14, 1995, although before that time a project collecting public domain

Public domain

Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...

 works was already running on Usenet

Usenet

Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...

. Whether it is still active can be doubted; the latest news is dated 2001.