June 2006 - gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

Fwd: an open letter to the google book scanning people
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 12 Jun '06

12 Jun '06

f.y.i.

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utf8 prototyping
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 11 Jun '06

11 Jun '06

i've begun prototyping utf8 capability in my apps. if anyone would like to help test that, let me know. i remember getting a bunch of flak back when i advocated stripping a few diacritical marks in english texts for the sake of wide compatibility (since english readers understand it fine anyway). here's a chance for those people to show that they weren't just flapping their yaps... -bowerbird

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Auction of rare books at the end of June
by kreeder＠mailsnare.net 11 Jun '06

11 Jun '06

This article appeared in the Cincinnati Enquirer last week, thought I'd share it in case others might also find it interesting: Treasure of rare books on the block Historical Society expects $4.5M+ from auction By Margaret A. McGurk Enquirer staff writer In the middle of the 1920s, a newly married Cornelius J. Hauck began to collect books. At first, he and his wife, Harriet Wesche, looked only for botanical subjects: trees, plants and flowers. In the next 40 years, the hobby blossomed into a passionate love affair with everything rare and glorious in the realm of the written word. The scion of a prominent Cincinnati brewery and banking family, Hauck bought books printed on paper, chiseled in stone, carved into jade, wrapped in leather and silver and jewels. Taken all together, those books form a spectacular treasure that stayed locked in a vault for 40 years, unknown to most outside the Cincinnati Historical Society, to which Hauck donated the collection in 1966, a year before his death. This month, its anonymity ends. On June 27 and 28, Christie's auction house in New York will sell the Hauck collection under the title "The History of the Book." Prices are expected to exceed $4.5 million. "Given the fact that we are really a regional history organization, it doesn't make sense for us to keep them," said Douglass W. McDonald, head of the Cincinnati Museum Center, which includes the historical society. Money from the sale will be used to care for the 50,000-plus books in the historical society collection. "We think it is important for these works to be put in the hands of people who can bring them more to the public's attention, and . . . where the world's scholars will be made aware of this collection." Francis Wahlgren, head of the books and manuscripts department at Christie's, said Hauck's books remained largely unknown in part because they were bought with the help of an unusually discreet adviser, Emil Offenbacher of New York. Offenbacher, a book dealer, bought many of the pieces on Hauck's behalf at estate sales and auctions in the '30s and '40s but did not reveal Hauck's identity. "His name is not bantered about the room," Wahlgren said. "Many book dealers would let that out, (that) they had a big client in Cincinnati and so forth. That never happened with Offenbacher." As a result, "There are things in there none of us have seen in 40 or more years," he said. "They are museum pieces in the sense that any examples that have survived tend to be in museums. They're unobtainable." The collection includes 900 items, to be sold in 700 lots, including ancient cuneiform tablets, illuminated manuscripts, rare bindings, sacred texts in Arabic and Hebrew and fragments of Greek papyrus, as well as modern miniatures and first editions. Because of the breadth of the collection, Christie's enlisted specialists in jewelry, silver, Asian art, Islamic artifacts, decorative arts and many other areas to assess and catalog the items. "No book collection has ever required such a team effort," he said. At least one local archivist regrets that the museum center did not make a greater effort to find a way to keep the collection intact, and in Cincinnati. Kevin Grace, University of Cincinnati archivist and head of the rare books department for the UC library system, said: "It's disappointing that they didn't try and get a local buyer first. It's a shame it's going to be dispersed and leave the city." The museum's decision to sell came as a surprise, he said. "We didn't find out about it until Christie's had it listed as an upcoming auction. If we'd known before, it might have given us the time to court somebody to endow the purchase. . . . We already have a very fine rare-book collection, and this would add to it. And since it was a Cincinnati-compiled collection, it would be nice to have it remain in the city." Museum spokesman Rodger Pille said some institutions outside Cincinnati that specialize in rare books were contacted informally about the possibility of buying the entire collection, "but at the end of the day, we determined that the auction provided a way for every one of those institutions to supplement their collections." The collection has never been exhibited in full, although a few items were shown during the museum center's "Prized Possessions" show in 2000. In recent weeks, about 40 pieces were displayed in London, Paris and Munich to entice European buyers, Wahlgren said. "In the book world, it's a huge source of excitement," he said. "This means a major new collector will be brought to light. A book from this collection will be known as the 'Hauck copy.'" * * * * Hauck collection The collection's single most valuable item, with an estimated sale price of $600,00 to $800,000, is "The Book of Friendship", an illuminated manuscript created between 1596 and 1633 to memorialize the crowned heads of Europe. A 20th-century Chinese-Tibetan portable "pocket shrine" carries the catalog's lowest price estimate, at $50-$150. A number of items are listed at less than $500. The newest book in the collection is a 1955 limited edition of Surrealist poems by Paul Éluard, listed at $1,500 to $2,000. The oldest is a Mesopotamian cuneiform cone dating to 2250 B.C., being sold with a newer but similar item; estimated price for both is $1,000 to $1,500. Francis Wahlgren, head of the books and manuscripts department at Christie's auction house, said his personal favorite among the 900 items in the Hauck collection is a 17th-century Dutch merchant's book on coins that has its own set of scales. Wahlgren described it as the original owner's "Blackberry, his technology at hand." See some of the rare items and get more info about the collection at Cincinnati.com. Keyword: photos [Note: I think I found the appropriate page at this site, but my browser showed it to be empty.) * * * * "The History of the Book" auction will be at Christie's, 20 Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan, beginning at 10 a.m. June 27 and 28. Viewing days are June 23-26. The 679-page catalogs are $35 and can be ordered online at www.christies.com or by phone at 800-395-6300.

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re: [gutvol-d] All people with accounts on ibiblio! PG site moving to wiki
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 09 Jun '06

09 Jun '06

marcello said: > Proactive conflict management. well, i suppose if you really cannot help yourself from becoming entangled, that's understandable. good luck with your wiki. -bowerbird

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All people with accounts on ibiblio! PG site moving to wiki
by Marcello Perathoner 09 Jun '06

09 Jun '06

I'm moving the static part of the PG site to a wiki. This will allow more people to participate in the site maintenance and improvement. Everybody who currently has shell access on ibiblio should stop editing the html pages and transfer their content to the wiki instead. The wiki will soon replace most of the PG site, except for the online catalog and a few other pages. The wiki can be reached at: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/ 1. Currently all new users have to be added by a sysop (me). If you speak wiki and want an account, mail me your username and initial password. You will be added to the "gutenberg" group. 2. The wiki has a 'private' section. All pages starting with "Gutenberg:" are editable by the "gutenberg" group only. This will be the 'official' PG site. 3. The rest of the wiki works just like wikis are supposed to work. You may put it to any use you like that helps "producing and distributing ebooks". -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster(a)gutenberg.org

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re: [gutvol-d] All people with accounts on ibiblio! PG site moving to wiki
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 09 Jun '06

09 Jun '06

i see that _marcello_ has blocked _me_ as a "troll". ironic, eh? t.e.i. is lagging, but the smear campaign continues. whatever, i've got better things to think about... -bowerbird

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!@! 4 Weeks: The Big Push, Well Not So Big This Time
by Michael Hart 08 Jun '06

08 Jun '06

As most of you are aware, it is 4 weeks until we complete our 35th year of Project Gutenberg history, and we have about 380 eBooks left to make it to 20,000. This would be about 95 per week. . .we did 82 this week. So it's not such a Big Push as we did to get to 10,000, but a rather smaller push, which is why you haven't heard me say an awfully lot about it. . .things are working out much a closer match to reaching 20,000 on our 35th anniversary than anyone, myself included, would likely have predicted. However, especially since I am planning on taking a week off, right at July 4th, I am best man at my best friend's wedding, I am trying to get as much as possible done before I leave as soon as I can after sending out the Newsletter a week before. I am working on the July 5th Newsletter, and will have it out in a fairly complete manner half a day after the previous one goes out, and am hoping that some of our volunteers will have the wherewithal to update it and send it out July 5th with an entirely up to date revision, that hopefully will hit 20,000. If you have any books that are near completion, but would not be totally through all the various processes, we can put them in the "PrePrints" section now, where perhaps a few people in the next few weeks can help with them. More later, I'm just trying to make it one day at a time right now. . . . Thanks!!! Give the world eBooks in 2006!!! Michael S. Hart Founder Project Gutenberg Blog at http://hart.pglaf.org

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re: [gutvol-d] Dagger/sword symbol, Scandinavian countries
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 08 Jun '06

08 Jun '06

andrew said: > Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward, 2000 to 1887" gosh i enjoyed that book as a youngster... -bowerbird

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Works of Bertolt Brecht
by Marcello Perathoner 08 Jun '06

08 Jun '06

Famous German playwright Bertolt Brecht died 14. Aug. 1956. His works will therefore be in the public domain in life+50 countries by January. I'm a big fan of Brecht so I'm willing to put quite a lot of work into an electronic edition of his works. I have an edition of his "Gesammelte Werke" (collected works, 20 volumes) Copyright Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt am Main 1967 that I'm willing to sacrifice to the good cause. Is this edition eligible for processing by DP-EU or any other DP? -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster(a)gutenberg.org

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Thank You for all of your work (fwd)
by Michael Hart 08 Jun '06

08 Jun '06

As usual at this time of the year, I will be sending you some "Thank You Notes" from our Project Gutenberg readers. Here is one message, in it's entirety, that I hope you enjoy! Thanks!!! Give the world eBooks in 2006!!! Michael S. Hart Founder Project Gutenberg Blog at http://hart.pglaf.org ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 03 Jun 2006 17:48:23 +0100 From: Amy <amy.e.pedersen(a)gmail.com> To: hart(a)pobox.com Subject: Thank You for all of your work Dear Project Gutenberg, I dont know if many people take the time to thank you, but I just wanted to express my gratitude for the services you provide. Thank you all for your work and dedication. Your work is profoundly appreciated. I am a Peace Corps Volunteer working deep in rural Namibia. I had always admired Project Gutenberg (even donating some time through Distributed Proofreaders) but I have only begun to realize how truly important it is since I have been here. When I was in America it was nice to have access to books whenever I felt like it, without having to go to the trouble of going to a library or bookshop, but here it is vital. Bookshops are rare in Namibia (the nearest one to my village is over 250 kilometres away) and the books they sell are often very very expensive (especially considering my limited financial resources.) Also, the books they sell are often only in Afrikaans or German, neither of which I understand (Peace Corps taught me the tribal language in my villageKhoeKhoeinstead.) Libraries are even rarer and often badly under stocked. I am trying to build up a school library, but we are dependent on donations and it is much more important to get easy to read picture books to help the children with their English than to get classics for my own consumption. Project Gutenberg has become my library. I didnt realize the importance of plain vanilla texts until I got here and realized how slow and expensive internet is. The zipped plain vanilla texts often take less than 5 or 10 minutes to download and provide hours of reading enjoyment. Thank you for being an equalizing force in literacy, allowing books to reach those who would otherwise have a hard time getting them. Your work is thoroughly appreciated. I have shared your site with other volunteers who also enjoy it. Thank you so much. I am immensely grateful. Sincerely, Amy Elizabeth Pedersen

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