November 2005 - gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

Please help archive the Katrina disaster
by Jon Noring 03 Apr '06

03 Apr '06

[I'm forwarding this for Brewster Kahle at the Internet Archive. If you have any Katrina-related links, please submit them as detailed below. As Brewster requests, please forward the following message to other relevant mailing lists and online forums. Jon Noring, TeBC Administrator] The Internet Archive, a non-profit digital library, needs help in finding URL's of sites and blogs that contain documents of this major disaster. Please email links to sites and pages that should be saved for future research to katrina(a)archive.org. We have worked to archive events such as 9/11 and the tsunami with the generous help of volunteers finding and sending in links. We then save these digital works for the long term and create research tools (for example: http://www.loc.gov/minerva/collect/sept11/ index.html and http://web.archive.org ). As a library, we provide free access to those wanting to learn from these events-- we can only hope that we learn some lessons from disasters such as these. Again, please send email to katrina(a)archive.org with lists of URL's you suggest should be archived relevant to the Katrina Disaster. We are also looking for a couple of volunteers that can help orchestrate the crawl. If you are interested, please send a note to katrina(a)archive.org with "volunteer" in the subject line. Please forward this message to any appropriate lists or people. Thank you. -Brewster Kahle Digital Librarian Internet Archive ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Get Bzzzy! (real tools to help you find a job). Welcome to the Sweet Life. http://us.click.yahoo.com/A77XvD/vlQLAA/TtwFAA/89EolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/archivists-talk/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: archivists-talk-unsubscribe(a)yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

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www.gutenberg.org
by Marcello Perathoner 25 Dec '05

25 Dec '05

As of my request ibiblio has changed our apache virtual host ServerName from gutenberg.net to www.gutenberg.org. What? Nothing changes in web site operation except one little particular (if you hit a non-existing url you get redirected to www.gutenberg.org instead of gutenberg.net) Why? The .org top-level domain is meant for non-profit organizations while the .net domain is meant for network infrastructure such as providers, backbones etc. We own both gutenberg.net and gutenberg.org, but using the latter one is just more standard-compliant. Although both urls www.gutenberg.net and www.gutenberg.org give exactly the same results, you should start using www.gutenberg.org in all publications, papers etc. -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster(a)gutenberg.org

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Free Beer !
by Marcello Perathoner 12 Dec '05

12 Dec '05

I got two complaints about the wording of the PG main page. In particular I refer to these two paragraphs: "All Project Gutenberg ebooks are free as in _free beer_ for anyone living in the United States: You may download all our ebooks for your personal use for free. "Most Project Gutenberg ebooks are also free as in _free speech_: You may copy them, give them away and use them in any way you like. See the license page for details." This wording, while a bit on the "slang" side, has proved very effective and I got much less questions of the kind "May I download Moby Dick and post it on my side which is about fishing?" than before. Also, I like it for `sentimental' reasons, because it is the slogan of the Free Software Movement. But this may be just a pet of mine. One person complained about the wording on the grounds that "There ain't no such thing as a free beer." (I don't think we have to consider this one.) A different complaint reached me a few days ago: > It is not an issue of understanding the meaning of the phrase, but > rather the appropriateness of it. It is inappropriate to give the > appearance of encouraging drinking, when many of the people using the > web site are junior or senior high students. I personally think this claim is bogus and I told the claimant so. But, as I'm living in a town that is proud for its cathedral and its beer (not necessarily in that order) I may be prejudiced. I therefore ask for opinions. More: If we decide to change the wording, we need a new one ("Free lunch" would anger the libertarian even more :-) ) that conveys the idea that PG is not just a free book download service. -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster(a)gutenberg.org

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"iridium asteroid"
by Michael Dyck 27 Nov '05

27 Nov '05

In PT1a Weekly Project Gutenberg Newsletter, Michael Hart wrote: > > Even a tiny gold, platinum, or iridium asteroid under 100 feet > in diameter could destroy the world's economic system, because > in spacefaring terms, our finanical institutions are based on, > still to this day, "beads and trinkets" that could still buy a > Manhattan Island for $24 worth of such beads and trickets from > the perspective of any spacefaring race that could simply pull > such an asteroid out of orbit and give it to us for Manhattan. > > Think such asteroids don't exist? > > Just ask any dinosaur expert what wiped out those dinosaurs. > > It was an iridium asteroid, and a lot bigger than 100 feet. No, it wasn't "an iridium asteroid". It was an asteroid with about the average concentration of iridium for bodies in the solar system, which is to say, in parts per billion. The notable thing is that on Earth, most of the iridium is concentrated in the core; in the crust, iridium is (even) rarer than the solar system average. Thus, when a 10km asteroid of average iridium concentration slams into the Yucatan peninsula, you get a thin layer of rock (all over the world) that is "rich" in iridium, relative to the surrounding rock. But it's still just parts per billion. -Michael

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"iridium asteroid"
by Michael Dyck 26 Nov '05

26 Nov '05

In PT1a Weekly Project Gutenberg Newsletter, Michael Hart wrote: > > Even a tiny gold, platinum, or iridium asteroid under 100 feet > in diameter could destroy the world's economic system, ... > > Think such asteroids don't exist? > > Just ask any dinosaur expert what wiped out those dinosaurs. > > It was an iridium asteroid, and a lot bigger than 100 feet. No, it wasn't "an iridium asteroid". It was an asteroid with about the average concentration of iridium for bodies in the solar system, which is to say, in parts per billion. The notable thing is that on Earth, most of the iridium is concentrated in the core; in the crust, iridium is (even) rarer than the solar system average. Thus, when a 10km asteroid of average iridium concentration slams into the Yucatan peninsula, you get a thin layer of rock (all over the world) that is "rich" in iridium, relative to the surrounding rock. But it's still just parts per billion. -Michael

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Re: Line art (was Google Print vs. The Open Library vs. Project ...)
by Gutenberg9443＠aol.com 25 Nov '05

25 Nov '05

PS-- If that bird guy has any line art to send me, he should send it to someone else to have it forwarded to me. For some reason his mail isn't reaching me anymore. And please--everybody--document! Source, bibliographic data, date, author, illustrator if available! Get it as close to 510 X 680 pixels as you can, in .jpg, .gif, or .bmp. I'm not set up to deal with any other format. If it's not documented I'm not going to give it to anybody to post and I'm not going to use it myself. Stuff you BOUGHT from Dover is okay. Dover, to the best of my knowledge, does nothing that is not out of copyright. Anne

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Re: [gutvol-d] Re: gutvol-d Digest, Vol 14, Issue 64
by Gutenberg9443＠aol.com 25 Nov '05

25 Nov '05

In a message dated 11/24/2005 12:45:01 P.M. Mountain Standard Time, sly(a)victoria.tc.ca writes: Asking about copyright status on this mailing list will often only get you speculative, hypothetical answers. The only way to know for sure if you can consider a particular item to be ok to use for PG purposes is to submit the TP&V for copyright clearance. After reading this discussion I realized that I am inadvertently creating confusion for future people. When I put one of my own books up on Fictionwise for sale, I give the original copyright date and "this edition copyright 2005 by Anne Wingate). But in all but one case, it's not just a new copyright on old material. In all but one case I rewrote quite extensively, and was quite surprised to find that I didn't have to rewrite THE EYE OF ANNA. So I'm going to change that practice at once, and arrange to have all the already-posted books' copyright info changed. Thanks, guys, for the warning. BTW, be aware that T. H. White extensively rewrote THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING at least six times to my knowledge, and all six editions are available in very large libraries. I did a textual analysis of it in grad school and found it extremely confusing.. That probably isn't a world's record for rewriting several long books over and over, but I've never seen one more often rewritten. At one point he actually inserted that idiotic magic combat with Madame Mim from the Disney version. Anne

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Jpeg2000
by N Wolcott 25 Nov '05

25 Nov '05

What do we do with Jpeg2000 files to make them into something useful??? Norm Wolcott nwolcott2(a)post.harvard.edu

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Re: [gutvol-d] Re: Line art (was Google Print vs. The Open Library vs. Projec...
by Gutenberg9443＠aol.com 25 Nov '05

25 Nov '05

In a message dated 11/25/2005 5:43:05 A.M. Mountain Standard Time, prosfilaes(a)gmail.com writes: That's not true. Much of Dover's material is original, reprints of material still under copyright, or reworking of public domain material until the copyrighted material is hard to seperate from the public domain (the clip art books are a good example of this; they have a compilation copyright, and I suspect they've done enough cropping and cleaning on the art to claim a copyright on the pieces in many cases). Thanks for the clarification. Okay, we CAN'T use Dover. Anne

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Re: [gutvol-d] Re: !@!Re: [BP] Google Print vs. The Open Library vs. Project ...
by Gutenberg9443＠aol.com 25 Nov '05

25 Nov '05

In a message dated 11/23/2005 2:32:52 P.M. Mountain Standard Time, prosfilaes(a)gmail.com writes: >>I could, for one book, even now. I remember one critical edition that >>showed a comma or period in full color blown up 10 times to show that >>it was actually a broken comma, not a period. I've had times when I've >>been looking at my own scans and had a hard time telling noise from >>punctuation. I want a chance to check this without having to have a >>hardcopy of the book in hand. Obviously you have specialized needs. I have no objection to their posting full page scans; I just want them to have been OCRed and put into one file as well. As my vision continues to deteriorate, I often have trouble telling noise from punctuation even on my own manuscripts. Sometimes I enlarge the type font considerably so that I can see what I'm doing. Since finally deciding that I didn't want to write my book about Jungian archetypes in GRAVITY'S RAINBOW or my book on Kipling's use of the supernatural, I no longer consider myself a scholar. The irony in this is that I got my doctorate so that I would have alphabet soup to put after my name when I published my Kipling book. > Forget the pretty. Most people want the words. >>If we're here for what most people want, I think we can pretty much >>retire. I can think of a couple things we're missing, but not in plain >>text. I correct myself. "Most people" doesn't make sense in this context. Most people who love to read want the words. I would love to be able to be a bibliophile in terms of collecting rare editions and first editions, and for a while I was; but severe illness complicated by subsequent poverty made it necessary for me to take my beloved antique books to Sam Weller and get however much money I could for them. Parting with my two-volume eighteenth-century edition of Charles Churchill's complete poems just about broke my heart, but not being able to take my children to the doctor would have broken my heart a whole lot more. BTW, the paper was still completely white and strong though the books were over two hundred years old. I asked Tony Weller the reason for this, and he said that it was made of hemp, and hemp paper is extremely strong and long-lasting but is illegal in the United States. So we cut down trees and make paper that's going to turn yellow in ten years and crumble in twenty-five years, instead of using an annual crop of hemp because SOMEBODY MIGHT WANT TO SMOKE THE PAGES OR THE WASTE, OR PUT IT IN BROWNIES! Duhhh. This is about as un-self-serving as anything I ever said: I'm one-sixth owner of a tree farm in Louisiana. Don't blame me; my grandfather bought it. I like the occasional income it brings in, but I like breathing a lot better. (If you've been living in Mars for the last fifty years, you might not know that marijuana is a form of hemp or vice versa; I'm not exactly sure) One of the things I've been missing from PG is scans of line-art pictures in high-enough quality to make reuse possible. Instead of buying a Dover art book, I should be able to dig through the PG archives to find a suitable picture. With this I agree. In fact, I think it would be an excellent idea for us to scan good line art AND black and white etchings in anything we know is out of copyright. Since the author and the illustrator don't necessarily die at the same time, we might have to begin by scanning just pre-1923 work, but even that would be a good start. I too am frustrated by the necessity to go to Dover or run around hunting illustrations, after having bought three good and expensive collections of copyright-free art. I know what is going to be said now. If I want it, do it. Okay, guys, send them to me. I'll put them on my computer until somebody tells me who to send them to for posting. But I don't have room to store more than 5 GB at a time, and that's pushing my luck. If someone wants to ship me an external hard drive with umpty thousand GB to be used just for PGLAF and sent to somebody else at PGLAF when I bite the dust, I'll archive them here even after they're posted. Why do I suspect I'm going to wish I hadn't said that? Anne

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