Motivation:

Lack of resources by and about women writers.

In 1994, less than 10% of books online were written by women
-- Jane Austen, Charlotte & Emily Bronte, Mary Shelley --
Virtually no poetry, biography, travel, science, religion, etc.

Lack of any central organization or listing of resources to make them easy to find.

Issues of canon formation:

Was a de facto all-male canon being created online?

Incredible potential of the web to make hard-to-find materials freely available
to a wide variety of readers,
potentially changing how we see women in history and the canon of writers.