November 2004 - gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

Re: [gutvol-d] documenting etexts
by Joshua Hutchinson 22 Nov '04

22 Nov '04

----- Original Message ----- From: Gutenberg9443(a)aol.com > > In a message dated 11/21/2004 2:07:20 AM Mountain Standard Time, > traverso(a)dm.unipi.it writes: > > >>Here too you are assuming that other people use the > >>same tools that you use. A good tool is one that adapts >>itself to an > >>unknown situation, and does not make assumptions. >>Discarding page > >>numbers in reference works makes assumptions on >>other people's working > >methods; the result is a less flexible tool. > > > > I didn't assume. I asked. Some ISPs carry formatting over and some don't. I > have no idea what ISP someone I don't know is using or what that ISP might do > with formatting. Actually, the ISP has nothing to do with it... What shows up is dependent on what program you are using to read the e-mail. Just a quick FYI. > > A good tool is one that can be used for at least 50 things besides the one > it is designed for. You can use two bricks to kill a fly, if you can figure out > how to make the fly stay on the bottom brick long enough for you to clap the > top brick on top of it. You can use bricks and boards to make a bookcase. > You can make a street out of bricks. Go away and think of 47 other uses for > bricks. Then talk to me about tools. > > I am not recommending discarding page numbers in reference books. I am > suggesting that the majority of books already posted do not necessitate going back > and redoing to insert the page numbers. > Well, you can kill that same fly by running over it with a semi truck ... but that doesn't make either one a GOOD tool for the job. Carlos' point (which was worded nicely despite your reaction to it) is that you have to create a system that works despite not knowing the exact environment it will be used in. This is why so many people had problems with bowerbird's ZML viewer. It required everyone to be using a specific reader program that you simply cannot guarantee will be in use. > It's like those old Tom Swift books I was recently accused of reading Unless I missed a message somewhere ... someone was using the Tom Swifts as an example of a type of book for a particular point. It was not a listing of what you read or don't read. > > But do enough people want to write learned papers on Tom Swift, or Tarzan, > or Elsie Dinsmore, or The Wizard of Oz, for it to be reasonable for me to > demand that all the Tom Swift, Tarzan, Elsie Dinsmore, and Wizard of Oz books to > be pulled down until somebody has time to rescan them and keep all the page > numbers this time? > No one has ever said that (unless, again, I missed a message). Many people have said that they will need to be redone at some future point to put that information back in. (Jon Noring is the biggest proponent of this.) > By the way, since so many people seem to know better than I do what I'm > reading at present, I'll save them the trouble of guessing. This type of wording is what starts flame wars. And it is coming from your side. Please calm down a little here. No one has tried to start a flame war, but I can see people getting defensive in reply to your recent messages and it will lead to some things being said that probably shouldn't be. > > What have I ever done to you to make you want to bite my head off every time > I post? I can't help being autistic. I was born autistic. You can help being > a walking, talking, grouch box. > > Anne > All I can tell you, Anne, is that Carlos did NOT bite your head off. Rather, he explained the fallacies he saw in your argument. Carlos is actually one of the more even tempered folks around here. He won't hold back on pointing out things he disagrees with, but I've never seen him be a "walking, talking, grouch box." Josh

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Re: [gutvol-d] documenting etexts (without flaming)
by Gutenberg9443＠aol.com 22 Nov '04

22 Nov '04

In a message dated 11/21/2004 2:07:20 AM Mountain Standard Time, traverso(a)dm.unipi.it writes: >>- assume that you want to quote a book that you have >>only in a paper >> edition; to quote it in your style, you need to manually >>count the >> paragraphs, both when quoting and when checking a quotation; >> wouldn't the standard way of quoting pages of a >>reference edition >> (usually, the only edition) be better? >>Of course, you said: >> Anne> Would not this serve most purposes? >>Yes, most maybe, but not all. And most is not enough. >>You said also >> Anne> to other texts as well. (I hope my underlining shows up in >> Anne> all email.) >>No, it doesn't. Here too you are assuming that other >>people use the >>>>same tools that you use. A good tool is one that adapts itself to an >>unknown situation, and does not make assumptions. >>Discarding page >>numbers in reference works makes assumptions on >>other people's working ??methods; the result is a less flexible tool. There's another problem here, that YOU are missing, and it is this: PG does not have control of all etexts. Whether the total number of free etexts online is 40,000, as I estimate, or 100,000, as Michael estimates, the fact remains that PG does not have all etexts, or a majority of etexts, or even a plurality of etexts. I keep track of every etext site I hear of, and I check all of them out. Only those few that post page scans, and there are very few of them, make original page numbers available. If I am looking for a book and I can find only page scans of it, I won't download it unless I desperately want it and can't find it anywhere else, because I don't like to fiddle around with putting the pages together to read. Some years ago I wanted a specific edition of the Qur'an, and had to download it sura by sura. It took me a lot more hours to put it together than I wanted to expend on that task. So a documentation method that works only for page scans and/or full texts that include page numbers is unusable for more texts than it is usable for Also, I don't want to say that all, or even most, reference books come in only one edition. My Oxford Guide to American Literature is fifth edition, and I'm almost certain there's now a sixth edition available. My Granger's Index to Poetry is eighth edition and I think it is two editions old; I know it is at least one. My Larousse English/German dictionary is dated 2000 and MIGHT be current, except for the fact that it uses the "new" German spelling, and I think I read online that the "old" spelling is back in use. Most astronomy, physics, biology, geography, and geology texts are out of date by the time they roll off the press, and by the time they make their way online they are so hideously out of date that anyone relying on them would be in trouble. Of the solutions proposed, the one I like best is the suggestion that the person doing the paper could include with it the URL of, or a link to, the specific reference book used, and to make sure it doesn't change, that person should put the source on his or her own Website and link to it there. But even THAT won't work for purchased ebooks. I think we'll probably flounder around for another ten to twenty years before a workable permanent solution is devised. But all the flaming and/or condescension in the world isn't going to help a bit. I apologize for my flaming yesterday. I try not to blow up but sometimes I do it anyway. Anne

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Re: [gutvol-d] documenting etexts
by Gutenberg9443＠aol.com 22 Nov '04

22 Nov '04

In a message dated 11/21/2004 2:07:20 AM Mountain Standard Time, traverso(a)dm.unipi.it writes: >>Here too you are assuming that other people use the >>same tools that you use. A good tool is one that adapts >>itself to an >>unknown situation, and does not make assumptions. >>Discarding page >>numbers in reference works makes assumptions on >>other people's working >methods; the result is a less flexible tool. I didn't assume. I asked. Some ISPs carry formatting over and some don't. I have no idea what ISP someone I don't know is using or what that ISP might do with formatting. A good tool is one that can be used for at least 50 things besides the one it is designed for. You can use two bricks to kill a fly, if you can figure out how to make the fly stay on the bottom brick long enough for you to clap the top brick on top of it. You can use bricks and boards to make a bookcase. You can make a street out of bricks. Go away and think of 47 other uses for bricks. Then talk to me about tools. I am not recommending discarding page numbers in reference books. I am suggesting that the majority of books already posted do not necessitate going back and redoing to insert the page numbers. It's like those old Tom Swift books I was recently accused of reading in preference to anything else: if I want to do a learned paper or book on the Stratemeyer syndicate--I think but am not sure, and it is not necessary for anybody to inform me, that it included Tom Swift; I know it included Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys--I will have to go somewhere that I can use the tree book versions, and even then I'll have to be careful, because I know that Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys were rewritten umpteen times, often with no more than the title saved from edition to edition and no indication in the front matter as to what version this one was. But do enough people want to write learned papers on Tom Swift, or Tarzan, or Elsie Dinsmore, or The Wizard of Oz, for it to be reasonable for me to demand that all the Tom Swift, Tarzan, Elsie Dinsmore, and Wizard of Oz books to be pulled down until somebody has time to rescan them and keep all the page numbers this time? I don't think so. By the way, since so many people seem to know better than I do what I'm reading at present, I'll save them the trouble of guessing. I have finally laid my hands on a copy of Isabella Beeton's 1865 book on household management--University of Adelaide has posted it--and I'm reading it because I think that it is appropriate Sabbath Day reading, and yes I know different religions have different "Sabbath Days" but I'm referring to my own religion's. (I specify this because I was once head of a very small--three person--department which happened to include a Muslim, a Christian, and a fellow who wasn't interested in religion. So I set schedules up so that I was always off Sunday, which I wanted, and Saki was always off Saturday, which he wanted, and Pat was always off in the middle of the week, which he wanted. So my boss's boss turned it all around so that none of us had the days off we wanted, because I could not get it through his head that we were all happy with the schedule I had arranged.) I stopped reading the book long enough to send a message to my brothers inquiring how to slice a garfish and how many axes would be necessary. Mrs. Beeton gives instructions for how to cook the garfish but she begins by saying that it is necessary to begin by slicing the garfish. Last time (okay, the only time) I ever saw a garfish, one of my brothers tried to behead it and broke an axe. By the way, Mrs. Beeton does not number pages. She numbers recipes. So her table of contents and her index get a reader to the right place no matter what form the text is in. Three cheers for Mrs. Beeton! The previous book was Pamela; the next ones will be A. Merritt's The Moon Pool and The Metal Monster. I'm perfectly furious that one of the A. Merritt books I've been seeking has turned up on FictionWise and I have to PAY for it and I don't have the money. Shall I report on what books I read after The Metal Monster? Actually I was kind of thinking about calling a whole lot of state capitals and explaining that we need to redo our registrations and asking how I need to go about doing it, but if it's necessary for me to give book reports I can do that instead. Also I'm sort of busy reading ancient Egyptian medical books in preparation for a novel I'm writing that includes Luke the Physician, but I couldn't get them online because the English versions are still in copyright and I can't read hieroglyphics, which doesn't matter because they aren't on line in hieroglyphics either, so I had to get them through ILL. What have I ever done to you to make you want to bite my head off every time I post? I can't help being autistic. I was born autistic. You can help being a walking, talking, grouch box. Anne

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[etext04|etext05]/index.html missing?
by John Hagerson 21 Nov '04

21 Nov '04

I am using wget to download books from www.gutenberg.org. The process is stuck on etext04 in what appears to be a futile effort to download index.html. The file must have been there last night, because I didn't have this problem. Could the appropriate person please look into this? Thank you very much.

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Re: PG catalog - MARC -- problem with encoding for Audio Books
by Steve Thomas 21 Nov '04

21 Nov '04

Brad Collins wrote: > Steve/ > > I tried to send this to the list but it bounced but you will likely > be about the only person interested so here it is... Surely that's not true! I'm sure many on this list are just thrilled by discussions about MARC. ;-) > > Steve Thomas <stephen.thomas(a)adelaide.edu.au> writes: > > >>Feedback welcomed. > > > First of all, your script taught me a lot about both MARC and > Perl. VERY GOOD WORK! Thanks. > > I have been working the last few days on porting your script to elisp > and I noticed the following problem with Audio Book records: > > RDF > > <pgterms:etext rdf:ID="etext9737"> > <dc:publisher>&pg;</dc:publisher> > <dc:title rdf:parseType="Literal">The Seven Poor Travellers</dc:title> > <dc:creator>Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)</dc:creator> > <dc:language>en</dc:language> > <dc:type>Audio Book, computer-generated</dc:type> > <dc:created>2006-01-01</dc:created> > <dc:rights>Copyrighted work. See license inside work.</dc:rights> > </pgterms:etext> > > MARC > > LDR 00560cam 22001573a 4500 > 005 20041111153800.0 > 008 060101s2006||||xxu|||||s|||||000 f eng d > 100 1 |aDickens, Charles,|d1812-1870 > 245 14|aThe Seven Poor Travellers |h[electronic resource] /|cby Charles Dickens > 260 |bProject Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation,|c2006 > 500 |aProject Gutenberg > 506 |aFreely available. > 516 |aElectronic text > 830 0|aProject Gutenberg|v9737 > 856 40|uhttp://www.gutenberg.org/etext/9737 > 856 42|uhttp://www.gutenberg.org/license|zLicense First, I see you are using a prior version of the script/output. The latest version now produces this: LDR 00626cam a22002053a 4500 000 9737 003 PGUSA 005 20041115162032.0 008 060101s2006||||xxu|||||s|||||000 | eng d 040 |aPGUSA|beng 042 |adc 100 1 |aDickens, Charles,|d1812-1870 245 14|aThe Seven Poor Travellers |h[electronic resource] /|cby Charles Dickens 260 |bProject Gutenberg,|c2006 500 |aProject Gutenberg 506 |aFreely available. 516 |acomputer-generated Audio Book 830 0|aProject Gutenberg|v9737 856 40|uhttp://www.gutenberg.org/etext/9737 856 42|uhttp://www.gutenberg.org/license|3Rights I can see immediately that I need to add soemthing for the copyrighted works. Probably an addition to the 506 note. > > I am far from being fluent in MARC, but from what I've seen I would > tend to say that the value for the 245 h subfield should be `sound > recording' and I am still not sure about the 516 field for electronic > file types. You'll see that the 516 now reflects what's in the PG catalog. The 245 h subfield value used is a generic term, for the medium of the item, and this is commonly used for any kind of electronic resource. The term 'sound recording' is used for things like LP (and I guess CD) records. The major intent is to distinguish this item from other media, e.g. paper. > > Does MARC have a list of defined enumerated values for these > subfields? > > I have a few other questions: > > I'm also still not clear on why a 500 field is needed. The 500 field is a > general note, so why would a note with a value of `Project Gutenberg' > be helpful? Not sure about this one. But using the 830 field (Series statement) requires either a 490 or 500 (general note). So I'm just following the MARC spec. here. Some things I just don't ask about. ;-) > > Second, I would suggest making the 260 field a bit more ISBD-ish. > > 260 |a-Urbana: |bProject Gutenberg, |c2006. > > or at least: > > 260 |aUrbana, |bProject Gutenberg, |c2006. Yes. You'll see I'm now using just 'Project Gutenberg' for the publisher name -- after coment from Greg. The a subfield can be used for place of publication, but ... I'm not sure what that is. Is it still Urbana (I thought PG had long since moved from there)? Is it the business address of PGLAF? Is it the home town of ibiblio? In the end, it seemed easiest to omit that. > > Which leads us to the question of how should the publisher name be > formated? > > In a sense, each PG; Aussie, Germany, EU, Canada etc would have a > different city they were published in, located in the country they > were from. Even if, (as they are in this case) seperate legal > entities the city should be enough to identify PG USA. There should > be a publisher authority record this points to. How should this be > handled? The catalog only includes items from "PGUSA". If other countries wanted to use the script to build MARC for their collections, then we can easily modify the script to change the publisher name. Thanks for the feedback! Steve -- Stephen Thomas, Senior Systems Analyst, University of Adelaide Library UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE SA 5005 AUSTRALIA Phone: +61 8 830 35190 Fax: +61 8 830 34369 Email: stephen.thomas(a)adelaide.edu.au URL: http://staff.library.adelaide.edu.au/~sthomas/ CRICOS Provider Number 00123M ----------------------------------------------------------- This email message is intended only for the addressee(s) and contains information that may be confidential and/or copyright. If you are not the intended recipient please notify the sender by reply email and immediately delete this email. Use, disclosure or reproduction of this email by anyone other than the intended recipient(s) is strictly prohibited. No representation is made that this email or any attachments are free of viruses. Virus scanning is recommended and is the responsibility of the recipient.

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Problems running W3 validator from XP
by John Hagerson 20 Nov '04

20 Nov '04

My efforts to use the W3 HTML validator fail every time because the MIME type is text. In the past, I was able to validate files. Other than chucking my operating system, do you have any suggestions as to how I can address this problem? Thank you very much.

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documenting etexts
by Gutenberg9443＠aol.com 20 Nov '04

20 Nov '04

Since this topic came up, I have given it a lot of thought. I think I have the answer. We do not have to know the specific page number if we're quoting the Bible or Shakespeare. That can be carried over to other texts as well. (I hope my underlining shows up in all email.) Bib entry: Richardson, Samuel. Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded. orig. pub. 1740-1741. n.p.: Project Gutenberg, n.d. footnote or endnote: Richardson. Pamela. Section IV, Letter VII, par. 4. Would not this serve most purposes? Please discuss this WITHOUT FLAMING. The world has flames enough without them showing up here. Anne

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TEI Header Spec (rough draft)
by Joshua Hutchinson 20 Nov '04

20 Nov '04

Attached at the bottom is rough draft of a teiHeader spec. I basically wrote it as an example teiHeader with comments scattered all over to explain things. Since I'm not a cataloging expert (heck, I'm don't even qualify as a catalog neophyte), I'm relying heavily on what is in Marcello's documentation and the original TEI documentation. I basically just picked out stuff that looked important and relevant based on stuff I've done before. I'm sure I've missed some things. Please take a look through this and point out items that aren't covered and you think should be. Also, if anything is unclear, let me know. I'll try to explain it better (and update the explanation in the spec). Remember, the goal is to be able to grab information from the teiHeader in each etext to generate cataloging information (this ties in nicely with the ongoing MARC discussions around here). Josh PS The next document will be the actual markup spec rough draft. This one will probably be delayed until after the US Thanksgiving holidays (I don't think well with 5 pounds of turkey digesting in my tummy!)

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Re: [gutvol-d] Re: PG catalog - MARC
by D. Starner 20 Nov '04

20 Nov '04

"Brad Collins" writes: > I used Series because The Early English Text Society publications are > cataloged as a series and this was the closest thing I have found to > the PG etext numbers. > > This is from the LOC: > > Series: Early English Text Society (Series). Original series ; 10, [etc.] > > 830 _0 |a Early English Text Society (Series). |p Original series ; |v 10, [etc.] So what happens when we do the EETS books? There's one in the PPVing queue at DP, and more being proofed and waiting for PPers. -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm

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LoC Public Domain Newspaper Archive
by Holden McGroin 18 Nov '04

18 Nov '04

Hi all! CNN is reporting that the U.S. Library of Congress is trying to digitize and make available over the web 30 million pages from public domain newspapers :-) http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/11/17/oldnewspapers.ap/index.html Cheers, Holden

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