[PGCanada] forward from another list

Laura Murray lm19 at post.queensu.ca
Tue Nov 9 12:28:40 PST 2004


Hi all. Sorry to drop in out of the blue like this. Russell McO sent an  
email to another list I'm on--fyi, this is what it generated--he  
thought it might be useful to you. I'm afraid that I have no time or  
expertise to lend to PGCanada, but do encourage those who do to contact  
some of the people mentioned below at CIHM, UofT, etc. I don't know the  
backgrounds of the people on this list, so please don't take this as a  
criticism, but in general I tend to think that there is greater point  
AND greater legal safety in a project that comes demonstrably out of a  
genuine desire to share literature than one that is mainly trying to  
make a point. If somebody wants to go and put GWTW up there online,  
that's fine, but I would think that PG would want to protect its brand  
name as it were and see a full-fledged site going even if it takes  
longer. Maybe there are Canlit people there who want such a site. You  
might try to contact Can lit profs--two at my university are Tracy Ware  
and Leslie Ritchie--and see if it's something they'd need or like to  
see or like to help with, and/or how it would complement existing  
resources. Grad students in English would be a great group to tap too.  
Or Library Science students. I'd love to see it there but I have to  
limit myself to spectatorship at the moment. All the very best, L.

On Tue, 9 Nov 2004, Wallace J.McLean wrote:
>> I've previously posted a link to the second-largest Canadian "public
>> domain" project I know of, Classiques des sciences sociales:
>>
>> http://www.uqac.uquebec.ca/zone30/Classiques_des_sciences_sociales/ 
>> html/
>> biblio_accueil.html
>>
>> The largest is, of course, canadiana.org CIHM has an understanding  
>> with
>> Project Gutenberg in the US that PG can use any of their book scans of
>> works which are eligible under the PG copyright rules (the US law). In
>> fact, a PG volunteer has produced a wonderful program called "Snatch"
>> which automates the process of downloading public-domain book scans
>> from various sites around the world, including canadiana.org, to
>> accellerate the conversion process. These scans are then run through
>> Distributed Proofreading: www.pgdp.net
>>
>> This infrastructure has already been "exported" to a similar project  
>> in
>> Europe. However, even though the single largest national "team" of  
>> PDGP
>> volunteers is Team Canada, PG-Canada just doesn't seem to want to fly.
>>
>> There's also ourroots.ca, which is a mishmash of PD- and non-PD
>> material, but I understand Snatch has been re-written to extract page
>> scans from that site as well. ourroots.ca concentrates on local
>> histories (which may or may not be PD), while canadiana.org
>> concentrates on historic Canadian of all types (most of which is PD,
>> and CIHM has an "unlocatable" license to cover its ass in the outlying
>> cases.)

And from me earlier the same day:

Hi. I'd recommend contacting Ian Lancashire at UofT who does the  
Representative Poetry project  
(http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/index.cfm). If he isn't  
interested in hosting/helping, he will know others. I don't know who  
Daryl is, but it would be nice to get some literary people involved so  
it wasn't just done to make a point, but rather to make literary  
materials available... ;-). There are probably Canadian literary ezines  
out there who might be into it. Or check out Coach House Press?

All for now, L.


Laura J. Murray
Associate Professor
Department of English
Queen's University
Kingston, Canada
K7L 3N6

phone: 613-533-6000 x74438
fax: 613-533-6872
email: LM19 at post.queensu.ca
website: www.faircopyright.ca
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