February 2006 - 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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36,000 and counting
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 25 Mar '06

25 Mar '06

distributed proofreaders just hit 36,000 registered users. congratulations! -bowerbird

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Early ebook history info wanted; "Alice"; Brown Corpus; Vannevar Bush; Asimov
by Jon Noring 10 Mar '06

10 Mar '06

Everyone, In doing some research on ebook history, which naturally will prominently include Project Gutenberg because of the obvious impact PG and Michael Hart has had on etexts and ebooks, I'm trying to reconstruct a fact database which includes the who, what, when, where, why and how of the various seminal events. So, I've just created a specialized Yahoo Group to collect/archive the snippets of facts that come up: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ebook-history/ You're welcome to join and post any information you know on ebook history. Especially wanted is the pre-1990 period: commercial, academic, and public (free). We should collect this information before it is lost to the mists of time. ***** Anyway, in doing research on what is found in the early Google Groups archive on PG, Bowerbird recommended that I dig through textfiles.com, which appears to have archived a large number of ASCII texts that existed on various BBS systems of the 1980's and early 1990's (its coverage/completeness is unknown, however.) So, focusing on the first "modern" classic book that PG issued, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (text #11, officially released 01 Jan 1991), I dug through textfiles.com to see what they had. The oldest copy I found there was "alice11.txt", Millenium Fulcrum Edition 1.1, dated 1990 (by copyright claim.) See: http://www.textfiles.com/etext/FICTION/alice11.txt That was issued in the very early era when PG was still affiliated with Duncan Research. As an aside, it is interesting to note the huge differences in that early text's boilerplate compared with the present boilerplate. PG has evolved quite a bit in handling the legal aspects (particularly copyright) of its texts, which is to be fully expected. So this text is a nice historical reminder of how far PG has come in the last 16 years. I was hoping, though, to find a much older text version of "Alice". Bowerbird stated his belief that Michael Hart keypunched Alice a lot earlier than 1990/91, but so far I have not found that version, assuming it was distributed and ended up in some BBS or online archive. So, Michael, if you're reading this, did you keypunch "Alice" well before 1990, where did you distribute it, and does a copy exist somewhere? That would truly be a historical work, especially if it was "digiscribed" in the 1970's or early 80's (BBS systems began maturing in the mid- to late-1980's.) A question for others reading this: where else should I search for information on digitized books placed on BBS in the 1980's? Were there others besides Michael who "digiscribed" public domain books and texts in the 1980's and placed them online? (I plan to dig through more of the textfiles area to see what book texts are dated in the 1980's, if any, and who did them.) ***** Another interesting thing I discovered in my research -- and which some of you undoubtedly know about -- is the "Brown Corpus": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_Corpus In the late-1960's, the partial/full texts of a variety of 500 works published in 1961 were keypunched for computer use (a maximum of 2000 words for each work), totalling a little over 1,000,000 words. The purpose was solely for lexicostatistics and not for direct reading. For this purpose the Brown Corpus is quite famous (enough to rate its own wikipedia article.) Only a few years later, in 1971 Michael Hart keypunched into a computer "The Declaration of Independence" for the purpose of electronic "distribution" and direct reading by others, so Michael is, as far as is now known, the first person documented to experiment with electronic distribution of readable, published digital texts. (I plan to contact the Brown Corpus people, if any are still alive, to see if there were experiments at Brown, or elsewhere, on this in the 1960's.) But nevertheless, to see major portions of published texts and books being keypunched and processed by computers in the 1960's is truly remarkable. ***** Another really cool thing, I found a Usenet message from 1987 which, in turn, is a fairly comprehensive description of an Atlantic Monthly article written by Vannevar Bush in July 1945, entitled "As We May Think". It is beyond amazing the insights Vannevar Bush had relevant to ebooks, to elibraries (like PG's) and the role of individuals and volunteers. Again, some of you have probably read Vannevar Bush's article, but for those who haven't... Usenet summary: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.mac.hypercard/msg/660f72a6e3b5f7a2?… And the actual article is reproduced here: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/194507/bush ***** Finally, Mark Bernstein, the founder of Eastgate, which in 1987 issued several contemporary hypertext fiction ebooks on floppy disk and CD-ROM, mentioned to me Asimov's mid-50's book "Foundation" where ebooks are implicit. Has anyone read this book and can comment on Asimov's 1950's vision for ebooks? Thanks! Jon Noring

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Commercial paper editions of PG texts
by Marcello Perathoner 28 Feb '06

28 Feb '06

Lately I've been using Google Book Search to check error reports against paper editions I don't have. It turns out that some of the more embarrassing errors in PG texts turn up in many commercial paper editions. See: http://books.google.com/books?q=%22but+stating+it+to+be+such+as+such+as+mig… http://books.google.com/books?q=%22what+has+been+sometimes+been+found+befor… All you need is a TeX installation and some imagination to write a real good copyright notice. -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster(a)gutenberg.org

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while you're waiting
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 27 Feb '06

27 Feb '06

while you're waiting for "monday morning quarterback"... this page will remind you what my idea of "continuous proofreading" would look like: > http://users.aol.com/bowerbird/proof_wiki.html basically, it's the traditional "proofing" interface, with the scan on one side, the text on the other. if someone spots an error, they can report it using the form right on the page, which adds the report instantly to the bottom of the page. that kind of transparency means that end-users don't "wonder" if an error was already reported, because they see each and every one reported... (the disposition of each report will be posted too, so people don't keep repeating the same report...) the reports are also collected on a separate page, sortable by report-date and page-in-the-book, so administrators get a quick-and-easy overview... of course, text has to be fairly clean before you can put it into "continuous proofreading" like this, but i anticipate i can take most o.c.r. to an accuracy of 1-error-per-10-pages, using my clean-up tools, an acceptable rate for continuous proofreading... -bowerbird

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monday morning quarterback -- a new weekly series
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 27 Feb '06

27 Feb '06

later today, when i get comments back from reviewers, i will debut a new weekly series called "m.m.q.", or "monday morning quarterback"... m.m.q. is a series where i politely tell all of you good people working here at project gutenberg and distributed proofreaders how you _should_ be doing your jobs... :+) i'll let you know when it's posted, and where. and that's not all the good news i have, either! i've also picked up a smidgen of perl, lately, and you know what they say about a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. yes, that's right, folks, bowerbird is now something of a script kiddie... imagine that! better lock down the web soon, or you don't know what damage i might cause... ;+) -bowerbird

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Random mention of Project Gutenberg
by Andrew Sly 25 Feb '06

25 Feb '06

Here is an interesting mention of Project Gutenberg that I found in the group alt.books.david-weber The context is a discussion of the character Ludmilla, travelling back in time from a technologically advanced future. "Also given molecular density storage its quite possible that Ludmilla's suit and/or the escape capsule has an awful lot of eBooks onboard. The twenty fifth century version of Project Gutenberg would fit on something microscopically small, and would probably contain designs for early versions of the phase drive and related tech, or at the very least books relating to their development." Andrew

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Re: [gutvol-d] clearing the decks
by Joshua Hutchinson 24 Feb '06

24 Feb '06

(I'm bored, so I'm responding to the troll today. This is a one off ... it'll be out of my system after this) > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Bowerbird(a)aol.com > > yet a mere 2 out of the 10 reported errors were actually fixed! wow! > is that a performance that you all believe that you can feel proud of? > Did you actually send that to the errata e-mail address on PG? Or just post it here where everyone has learned to tune you out? unless you send it to the errata email, no one is going to act upon it. The 2 that were fixed were very likely fixed because someone else DID forward them to the correct place. If you yell out of your front door, it is unlikely that Congress will hear and pass a new law. If you point out errors in books to people OTHER than the ones who fix it, it is unlikely that the right people will hear about it and fix the issues. > p.s. if jim's thinly-veiled insults persist over at d.p., > i'll have to start posting in those forums in response; > is that _really_ what you guys want? think about it... > Who's veiling the insults? We insult you quite openly when you deserve it. The problem is you're like a demon. Saying your name invokes the evil to appear. Josh

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clearing the decks
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 24 Feb '06

24 Feb '06

ok, let's see if i can clear the decks here, so i can get to some serious work next week... *** a while back, michael intimated that i was talking out of my ass when i speak of errors in the p.g. library, and that i should have sent _him_ the reports, so here is supporting data... *** first is a piece i wrote on errors in the p.g. copy of "swiss family robinson", _still_ all uncorrected... > http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/2005cleanup/on_swiss_family_robinson (this error-report was posted two full months ago.) *** second is a new review of the "fixes" in "the secret garden": > http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/2005cleanup/the_secret_garden_fix_an… this was a "re-do" of a book that was already in the p.g. library, so i was able to test my ideas on comparing dual digitizations... i have previously written on this project, in a gutvol-d message that was sent december 27th, shortly after the e-text was posted. in that message, i praised the accuracy, and noted 10 errors... this new post examines subsequent treatment of those errors. error-reports like this tend to get _very_ specific, so i've also posted the page-images online to help outsiders negotiate: > http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/2005cleanup/page000.jpg replace "000" in that u.r.l. with the page-number (zero-filled to 3 digits) to see the image-scan of each page as it's discussed in the error-report... in a nutshell, though, i reported 10 errors, and just 2 were fixed! this in response to a carefully-prepared error-report that gave you the page-number, the incorrect text, and the necessary correction, written only after i had taken a _very_ close look at each page-scan... how many error-reports will you get that are so well-documented? yet a mere 2 out of the 10 reported errors were actually fixed! wow! is that a performance that you all believe that you can feel proud of? *** third, i talked about how "alice in wonderland" was _very_close_ to z.m.l. compliance, but _not_there_... sorry, my memory was just a little wrong, there are _3_ excessive linebreaks in alice30.txt (not just one, as i had reported), one before each of these lines: > CHAPTER I > CHAPTER II > `Thank you, it's a very interesting dance to watch,' said of course, a linebreak that is "excessive" by z.m.l. standards is probably not something the _whitewashers_ will consider as an "error" that they need to "fix", but michael said that he wanted to know about such things, so i have told him... *** my messages were written in the course of ongoing threads, the first over on the bookpeople listserve, the second two right here. so all of these reports hit michael's e-mailbox. if you have any questions, do please feel free to ask them. otherwise, i will just sit back and wait for y'all to make these corrections... no need for a flame-war, though. i am convinced that you'll never build a better error-correction system, so somebody else (like me) will have to build one instead, and i'm prepared to do that... so save your energy... *** you will hear more from me starting on monday. which is appropriate, since tinsley likes to call me a "monday morning quarterback". heck, over on the d.p. forums, he's got it down to its acronym... get used to it, jim, you'll be hearing a lot from me, with _extensive_ demos, starting real soon now... -bowerbird p.s. if jim's thinly-veiled insults persist over at d.p., i'll have to start posting in those forums in response; is that _really_ what you guys want? think about it...

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Re: [gutvol-d] web site link not working
by Joshua Hutchinson 22 Feb '06

22 Feb '06

Working here for me. > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Greg Weeks" <greg(a)durendal.org> > To: "Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion" <gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org> > Subject: [gutvol-d] web site link not working > Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2006 08:38:17 -0500 (EST) > > > > I looked for a email address on the web site to send this to and didn't find > one. > > The link http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17355/17355-h/17355-h.htm from > http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/17355 doesn't work. > > -- Greg Weeks > http://durendal.org:8080/greg/ > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d >

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