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

Re: [gutvol-d] Adapting texts from other collections
by Joshua Hutchinson 07 Jul '06

07 Jul '06

> ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Andrew Sly" <sly(a)victoria.tc.ca> > > How about some Russian? <g> Now that I'm able to recognize > letters of the cyrillic alphabet, I've discussed with a > Russian-speaking DP volunteer the possibility of adapting > some of the classics texts from from lib.ru > (My local university library has a surprising amount > of pre-1923 volumes in Russian, including complete > Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, et al.) > Actually, as long as I don't have to doing any spell-checking, I'm good! :) It wasn't so much the foreign language aspects of the Arabic and Persian texts that scared me ... It was the fact the text flows from left to right and doesn't seem to have the same paragraph type structure that I'm used to in European languages. I imagine Chinese and Japanese texts would scare me equally! :) Josh

1 0

re: a bad sign
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 06 Jul '06

06 Jul '06

andrew said: > (Is it a bad sign if I'm thinking the same as bowerbird?) you betcha. check yourself in to the psych ward tomorrow. ;+) -bowerbird

1 0

Re: [gutvol-d] Pls. test worldebookfair.com
by Joshua Hutchinson 06 Jul '06

06 Jul '06

I'm currently finishing up a raid of the English texts on reference.bahai.org (I'm scared of the Arabic and Persian originals/translations ;) ). When I'm done with that, I'd love to have a new site to raid. If you have a site or two you want to send my way, I'll look into clearances and raiding their text. Josh > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Andrew Sly" <sly(a)victoria.tc.ca> > > As I am looking up authors etc. for the PG online catalog, > and just generally browsing, I seem to be constantly running > into more websites that have transcribed material that could > be added to PG. With a little effort, I could make a list for > you of dozens of sites, with thousands of books that could be > adapted. However, getting copyright clearance, and reformatting > these is perhaps not as "glamarous" as Distributed Proofreading, > so it does not attract as many people. :) > > Though I already have too many different PG projects I'm in > the middle of, I would be willing to help if you'd like to > start processing some of these texts. > > Andrew >

2 1

re: [gutvol-d] Review of "The Wealth of Networks" in the TLS
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 06 Jul '06

06 Jul '06

professor duguid ("do good"?) should digitize _his_ choice of the "best" version of that book, and donate it to project gutenberg. tell him so. then p.g. can make his choice "the internet standard". ;+) -bowerbird

1 0

Review of "The Wealth of Networks" in the TLS
by Philip Baker 06 Jul '06

06 Jul '06

This week's Times Literary Supplement has a review of "The Wealth of Networks" by Yochai Benkler. The book mentions Project Gutenberg. Of more immediate interest is what the reviewer has to say about Project Gutenberg. The relevant part of the review is quoted below. The reviewer is Paul Duguid, Visiting Professor at the School of Information and Management Systems at the University of California, Berkeley. 'Given their openness, both Project Gutenberg and Wikipedia are surprisingly good and unsurprisingly bad. Some thirty years in the making, Gutenberg offers about 17,000 "etexts". Many seem unexceptional, but for some the need to avoid copyright entanglements has led contributors to resurrect editions that were better left buried. Its version of Pan, the novel by Nobel-Prizewinner Knut Hamsun, for example, puts William Wurster's ridiculously prudish translation of 1921 before unsuspecting readers. Relying on a communications medium admired for its ability to "route around censorship", yet driven by a certain contempt for scholarship, Project Gutenberg threatens to make a number of poor editions - some bowdlerized, some originally corrupt, and some newly corrupted for the new medium - the internet standard.' -- Philip Baker

1 0

Pls. test worldebookfair.com
by Greg Newby 06 Jul '06

06 Jul '06

http://www.worldebookfair.com It was on an overloaded network connection earlier, but we moved it this (Wednesday) morning and the site seems to be performing well. Take a look - it's pretty neat! There are a few missing files & broken links, but for the most part things seem OK. -- Greg

6 9

New DVD ISO feedback sought
by Greg Newby 06 Jul '06

06 Jul '06

I've been working, slowly, on some new CD/DVD images (ISO files) for our use. As many people know, we've given away many thousands of free CDs and DVDs, and added the ISO images (along with BitTorrent, RAR and other formats) to the main PG collection. You can peruse the images I've been working on here: http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/gbn/pgimages actual ISOs are at: ftp://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/pub/gbn/isos These are not completed....I'll be adding stuff like GUTINDEX.ALL, donate-howto.txt, and a README.TXT You can see the nifty tool for creating such images here: http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/pgiso/ Here are the main two CD/DVD collections for you to consider: 1) "As many titles as possible." In the tool, I specified these numbers: 1-2199,2225-3500,3525-11774,11800-20000 with "no copyrighted", "txt/zip" format, and any language. The result is all of the zipped eBooks in plain text format, minus our copies of the Human Genome. (No, we don't go up to #20000 in the main PG collection, which the tool uses...only 18683 as of right now. I'm just using a high enough number that I don't need to look up the actual number.) This should be similar to our eBook #11800, the PG 2003 "10k special." For that, we tried to add as many as possible, resulting in ~9300 titles including .txt and .html (also Genome), all zipped. Surprisingly, we can fit *all* 17454 of our non-copyrighted text/zip titles with space to spare in a DVD: about 3.5GB. In case you're wondering (I was!), including as many HTML titles as possible (including their images) in html/zip, then filling in the rest with text/zip, yields about 3.25 DVDs (14.5GB). 2) "Best of Redux." Our Best Of CD image was made by human selection (on this list!), resulting in just under 600 titles. Many are HTML. Since #11220, we've added lots of great stuff. So, what would go on today's "Best Of"? I went ahead and recreated the image in the new tool, and also made one emphasizing HTML (since some titles have been moved to HTML that were previously just text). I've uploaded (to the /pgimages URL) the list of the "Best Of" eBook numbers, as well as the list of "best of" public domain that Amazon did last year (remember that?). GOALS: - confirm viability/suitability of the "allzipnohgp" collection (#1 above); make any suggestions. This is basically the densest way of getting people all of the PG collection, fitting easily on a single DVD. (Yes, I plan on filling it up with some of our nice HTML & multimedia. Your ideas are solicited.) - consider ways forward for a new "Best of" - either CD or DVD. The only thing I feel strongly about is showcasing some of our beautiful HTML titles with nice images. Yes to all the classics, and yes to plain text or HTML...but consider "best of" in terms of PG's best work, not just the classic titles. If anyone would really like to run with these idea and create some new images, go for it! The snowy tool makes it easy to share your own collections, and we have many places to distribute ISOs you create. I do think it's time to create some new "primary" giveaway images, though, and appreciate any ideas you might have. -- Greg

4 8

re: the only literature people care enough about to steal
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 06 Jul '06

06 Jul '06

cory doctorow said: > science fiction is the only literature people > care enough about to steal on the Internet. > It's the only literature that regularly shows up, > scanned and run through optical character recognition > software and lovingly hand-edited on darknet newsgroups, > Russian websites, IRC channels and elsewhere. you can find the whole article at: > http://www.locusmag.com/2006/Issues/07DoctorowCommentary.html -bowerbird

1 0

re: [gutvol-d] Pls. test worldebookfair.com
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 06 Jul '06

06 Jul '06

andrew said: > With a little effort, I could make a list for you > of dozens of sites, with thousands of books > that could be adapted. the real work, of course, is doing the "adapting". but even if p.g. doesn't want the list you'd make -- and i can't see why they would turn it down -- i'm sure plenty of people would find it useful... so go ahead! :+) i'd suggest a wiki, though, so other people could augment it. you can create a free wiki over here: > http://pbwiki.com -bowerbird p.s. that's the first time i've heard d.p. work called "glamorous"... :+)

1 0

Showcase eBook #18131
by Greg Newby 06 Jul '06

06 Jul '06

I have been perusing our collection for interesting stuff to put on the new DVD image ("interesting" being as broadly defined as possible). Here's one that is pretty new, but I didn't notice it earlier. It includes MIDI files and sheet music, as part of an eBook. It's a great example, to me, of the type of thing you can do with a computer-based eBook, but not so easily with plain old paper. The Rescue of the Princess Winsome, by Fellows-Johnston and Bacon 18131 http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/18131 (just view the HTML file, it links to the rest) Wow! -- Greg

2 1