[PGCanada] Re: PG-Canada / List of tasks to do

[Andrew Sly]

I'd suggest that getting content and finding Public domain books
is not something we need to worry about. Having enough interested
volunteers to help produce them will probably be more of a challenge.

I'll compare here with Project Gutenberg. Right now a bottle-neck
is in having people to post-process the texts coming out of DP.
There are plenty of people ready who could produce page scans
of eligible books faster than they could be processed.

As we will be dealing probably largely with post-1922 books
I don't think it will be too hard to find books that are eligible
for PG Canada.

I admire the philosophy of letting volunteers do what they
are interested in, or even just happen to find copies of.
However, it couldn't hurt to have a list of requested books.

Also, if it helps, I've got a large list of Canadian authors
(or at least from Canadian referance sources) courtesy of
Philip at the New General Catalog of Old Books & Authors
http://www.kingkong.demon.co.uk/ngcoba/ngcoba.htm

In the past, I have contributed a few dozen author names,
missing dates, etc. for his lists, and I'd suggest he would
be a worthwhile ally to have, particularly in the matter of
sharing author birth and death dates.

Andrew

On Thu, 27 Jan 2005, Wallace J.McLean wrote:

>
> > I'd also suggest a list of notable books and their location might be
> a
> > good idea. I know a few people who have a number of books that are
> not
> > likely in the system yet, but really should be. If we could identify
> > what cooperative people, have what books, then we might be able to
> get a
> > higher quality content sooner by prioritizing this list.
>
>
> It's both easy and hard to get a list of eligible dead guys. Easy; just
> use a pre-1955 year as an author name keyword in a library catalogue.
> (You'll also get lots of authors born in 1954, unless you restrict your
> search to imprints <1955 as well.) Hard; you get lots and lots of hits.
>
> What I've been promoting among some of the content-providing cabal is
> this:
>
> Let's concentrate on post-1922 imprints. DP-USA/PG-USA can do anything
> published before this date; let them (and the us that are a part of
> them) deal with those works there. Let's specialize in materials that
> won't be available on the US site for many years to come.
>
> And let's concentrate on works by authors who died more than 50 but
> less than 71 years ago. This is, realistically, the body of work most
> at risk of being lost to copyright extension in Canada. If we can get a
> gazillion such works re-used as public domain works, it makes it
> politically very difficult for the Guvmint to extend the life+term, at
> least not retroactively.
>
> So: on the content side, our major content providers should focus (not
> exclusively, but consciously focus) on post-1923 works by authors who
> died from 1934 to 1954. Next year we move the death dates up a year,
> and so on, and so on.
>
>
>