- gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

a few questions that i don't know the answer to
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 12 Nov '04

12 Nov '04

here are a few questions before i skip on out of here... first, for jon, and/or any other c.s.s. supporters out there: my finding is that, at least using internet explorer, when i copy c.s.s.-indented text (such as that in a block-quote) out of the browser-window, the indentation gets lost... (i'm not sure whether other browsers are able to retain the indentation.) do you have a solution to this problem? second, for greg. people over at distributed proofreaders have reported that the f.a.q. here at project gutenberg do not state that styled text (specifically, italics and bold) be marked with underbars and asterisks in the text files. the understanding i have from you is that this has become the official policy of project gutenberg. if that's not the case, would you please inform people here? and if it _is_ the case, when you next update the f.a.q., could you include this policy? thank you. the next questions involve long-standing and often-repeated requests that i have made for other changes to p.g. policy. having received no satisfaction, in spite of the reasonableness of these requests, i will pursue a strategy of lobbying for them to a wider audience, but i make them again here for the record. 1. could you _please_ strive for consistency in your e-books? 2. could you please ensure the policy on styled text is upheld? 3. could you please start including graphic-file-names in your plain-text versions, so my viewer-app knows what to display where? 4. could you please start including page-break information in your plain-text versions, so my viewer-app can use original page-breaks for those end-users that might desire that capability? 5. could you please start including line-break information in your plain-text versions, for the same reason? my documentation on zen markup language (z.m.l.) will demonstrate how you can incorporate these requests into your plain-text files... i'll continue to monitor this listserve until the end of the year, so you can respond here, or backchannel, whichever you prefer. not that i expect a response, since i've never gotten one so far. david widger and jim tinsley, i salute you for all the hard work you do. j. michael, thanks for being the one person who always treated me fairly here. and carlo, your record was almost as good; and as i've told you backchannel, you are one of the very few people here who quite consistently demonstrates a solid grasp on the problems and has good ideas about how to build the solutions to those problems, so keep on asserting yourself, because these people really need you. michael hart, if there's anything i can do for you, let me know. -bowerbird

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Re:[gutvol-d] [BP] The Future of eBooks
by Andrew Sly 11 Nov '04

11 Nov '04

== Resent message; It was bounced the first time == On Tue, 9 Nov 2004, Steve Thomas wrote: > This was all well and good, and eventually we ended up with > around 3,800 records for PG titles in our catalogue. > > However, the advent of DP put paid to all that. The volume of > works appearing each month very quickly overwhelmed me, and I > was forced to abandon the effort, so that an unfortunate side > effect of DP was that I could no longer add MARC records to our > catalogue. I believe something like this is also faced by John Mark Ockerbloom, who maintains the Online Books page. He has cataloged a large portion of PG, as well as thousands of online books from other sources. However, as you say, one person cannot keep up with the increasing number of old books being digitized. > I believe that recent changes and enhancements to the PG archive > may make a similar effort possible once more. First, I am told > that there is now an XML file of the PG database, and that this > contains much more and better detail than the old GUTINDEX list. I would qualify this with a "yes, but..." Yes, this does exist (see the link Greg gave, or here's a link directly to the compressed rdf file: http://www.gutenberg.org/feeds/catalog.rdf.bz2) But, as is PG custom, it has its own inconsistancies. All new records are generated automatically from information in the headers of newly posted files (and this is not always accurate) Many older records were copied from the old catalog from promo.net, which sometimes had "interesting" variations. Many records have additional information such as subject headings LOC classifications and sometimes other material of bibliographical interest in a "notes" field. But many records have only very basic information. Additional information is generally added when one of the volunteers who has write access to the catalog takes an interest in looking it up. So this happens somewhat irregularly. Taken all together, the PG online catalog does present plently of information that can help people interact with the collection in meaningful ways; but it may make professional librarians roll their eyes. > Second, PG now has a neater way of accessing texts, > using a simple URL like http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1234 > Previously, one could only link directly to the individual files > in the archive, and this complicated matters, since every title > has at least two files (.txt and .zip) and often there are > multiple versions and formats. Yes. In my own opinion, the ability to do this is perhaps the best thing to have happened for PG in the last year. This provides a much more ideal way to link to a PG title from any place such as newsgroups, websites, catalogs, whatever. (Thanks Marcello!) This also makes it easier to present selections from PG, organized by whatever criteria you choose. (eg, Marcello's list of "Top 100" downloads, my list of Canadiana.) All of this only encourages more exposure for PG, and a greater chance that some computer user will come across (perhaps by accident) a PG text that interests him. > Of course, one has to ask whether the effort of creating and > *maintaining* catalogue records for PG is worth while. We live > in the age of Google, and it is a lament frequently heard from > librarians that the user is more often likely to search the 'net > with Google than to use the Library catalogue. I believe the effort is worth while. Good cataloging can lead to a user finding an item of interest that may have been missed otherwise. And yes, google does index the PG "bibrec" pages, so any additional work done in cataloging could possibly lead to a text being found from someone searching with google. > However, redundancy is no bad thing with information, and the > more ways of getting at it the better -- so long as those ways > remain accurate. So I believe many libraries would welcome the > chance to load marc records pointing at PG texts -- provided > that they can be sure the record contents are accurate and the > links remain so. At this point in time, I would say a good deal of manual tweaking would be needed to get a result that would be somewhat satisfactory for librarians. Links should not be a problem, as the canonical URLs discussed above show every sign of being much more permanent than most. Andrew

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browse books published in a specific year?
by Gemma Dearing 11 Nov '04

11 Nov '04

Hi, I want to read books which were published in a specific range of years (1800-1820); is there any way I can browse/search for this? I realise that specific dates might not always be known, but even approximate date ranges would help a lot. TIA, Gemma. --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com) Version: 6.0.793 / Virus Database: 537 - Release Date: 10/11/2004 ___________________________________________________________ Moving house? Beach bar in Thailand? New Wardrobe? Win 10k with Yahoo! Mail to make your dream a reality. Get Yahoo! Mail http://uk.mail.yahoo.com

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Re: [gutvol-d] [BP] The Future of eBooks
by D. Starner 11 Nov '04

11 Nov '04

Alev Akman writes: > > But it's not. A book that included part of the current PG title > > was published > > and printed then; but the PG title also includes various other > > publicationsthat weren't combined with it in book form. > > I was just trying to make a point and give an example. I had no way of knowing what the publication date for the title in question was. Did I? : ) What point? It's obvious we're at cross purposes. The publication date had nothing to do with it. My point was that that data was wrong, because the PG book was a unique compliation of several original volumes; the fact that the publication date was wrong was a red herring. -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm

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Re: [gutvol-d] [BP] The Future of eBooks
by Alev Akman 11 Nov '04

11 Nov '04

----- Original Message ----- From: "D. Starner" <shalesller(a)writeme.com> Date: Wednesday, November 10, 2004 5:21 pm Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] [BP] The Future of eBooks > Alev Akman writes: > > > > > At 01:51 PM 11/10/2004, you wrote: > > > > >More towards what I was thinking, there are books that are > compilations of > > >several printed books. PG recently posted The Fifteen Comforts > of Matrimony: > > >Responses from Men and The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: > Responses from > > >Women. > > > > Here's the tabbed text format of the title you mentioned: > > > > The Fifteen comforts of matrimony. La Sale, Antoine de 1795 [by > > Isaiah Thomas] and sold at the Worcester bookstore. > > But it's not. A book that included part of the current PG title > was published > and printed then; but the PG title also includes various other > publicationsthat weren't combined with it in book form. I was just trying to make a point and give an example. I had no way of knowing what the publication date for the title in question was. Did I? : ) Alev. > > (It's probably a moot point, but that's not the text; that part of > PG text was > printed in 1706 in England. It may be a reprint, but it could be a > seperate > translation or a different text trading on the popularity of the > first.) > -- > ___________________________________________________________ > Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com > http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d >

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iPod transformation to try
by Greg Newby 11 Nov '04

11 Nov '04

I'm forwarding the information below in the hopes that some folks with iPods could check this out. Provided it works, I'll link it in our PDA "howto" and maybe we'll put a note about it in the newsletters. Please Cc any feedback to Dan, as well as gutvol-d. Thanks! Greg ----- Forwarded message from Dan Duris <dusoft(a)staznosti.sk> ----- From: Dan Duris <dusoft(a)staznosti.sk> To: Greg Newby <gbnewby(a)pglaf.org> Subject: Re: Converting Project Gutenberg's books for read on iPod Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 02:10:34 +0100 iPod eBook Creator allows you to convert any text file to notes (note files for iPod). You can then read almost any book, magazine or message available in plain text format on your iPod. It's free online service that basically splits the large text files to small ones (due to iPod limitation on note files). It also links the notes, so you can easily browse them same way as turning pages in the book. URL: http://www.ambience.sk/ipod-ebook-creator/ipod-book-notes-text-conversion.p… Any comments are welcome at: dusoft(a)staznosti.sk (I am not subscribed to this mailing list)

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Re: [gutvol-d] [BP] The Future of eBooks
by D. Starner 11 Nov '04

11 Nov '04

Alev Akman writes: > > At 01:51 PM 11/10/2004, you wrote: > > >More towards what I was thinking, there are books that are compilations of > >several printed books. PG recently posted The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: > >Responses from Men and The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from > >Women. > > Here's the tabbed text format of the title you mentioned: > > The Fifteen comforts of matrimony. La Sale, Antoine de 1795 [by > Isaiah Thomas] and sold at the Worcester bookstore. But it's not. A book that included part of the current PG title was published and printed then; but the PG title also includes various other publications that weren't combined with it in book form. (It's probably a moot point, but that's not the text; that part of PG text was printed in 1706 in England. It may be a reprint, but it could be a seperate translation or a different text trading on the popularity of the first.) -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm

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Re: [gutvol-d] [BP] The Future of eBooks
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 11 Nov '04

11 Nov '04

marcello said: > I think you should program one over the weekend in BASIC > to keep up your record of phenomenal software success stories. i'm busy this weekend. but i'll get to it next month, i promise... but it's appropriate that -- on my way out -- you'd try to smear me because i use _basic_ -- goodness gracious -- since that was exactly what you did when i first appeared. you also thought it was fashionable to try and ridicule me because i'm on a.o.l., so do try and work that in now too... because you can bet money that when i start up my blog and tell the world what a bunch of idiots are running the show here, i will make fun of you because you're a bunch of script kiddies who think that you'll rule the world because you know reg-ex. > Oh, no! He learned a new buzzword. > He'll never let us hear the end of it. actually, i've served my one-year sentence here, much of it in solitary, so i'll be leaving very shortly. oh, i learned that "buzzword" a long, long time ago. as far as "finding" things goes, it's a silver bullet... and if anyone wants to see it applied to books, the guy at alexlit was doing it many years ago. might wanna talk to him about it... -bowerbird

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Re: [gutvol-d] [BP] The Future of eBooks
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 10 Nov '04

10 Nov '04

brad said: > Are you kidding? no. are you? > Check any of the major online catalogs. > They all try to integrate records for electronic works. yeah. but so what? i don't get the impression that the people who are looking for e-texts go to a library's catalog to try and find 'em... > The rows of wooden drawers with paper catalog cards are > still there but most people use the computer catalog. um, yes, i quite realize that. as far as i know, the "rows of wooden drawers" were effectively replaced a decade or more ago. they're still kind of quaint, though, don't you think? in spite of their digitized equivalents, however, google (and the others) are the new "card catalog". so i would think it would be _far_ more productive to implement a strategy that leverages the search engines (because, honestly, the system you have now does not), instead of plays into all of the antiquated systems. heck, i'd even like to see a decent system on the website. the one there now is good if you know the title and/or the author-name. that's a start. but it doesn't go very far, not in _recommending_ a book to a reader... > A growing number of brick and mortar libraries > are now adding etexts to their collections. > Sometimes they only provide links to websites > but often they are local copies of the etexts > which correspond to their catalog entry. well, that's all very nice. and if they did all of the work to integrate this e-library into their system, i'd say "thanks". but i don't see much purpose in doing that work myself, not when a whole host of other capabilities would be _far_ more useful, in my eyes, like full-text search... if getting to the patrons of a specific brick-and-mortar library could _only_ be done by getting myself in that specific catalog, it might be a completely different story. but when those patrons can just as easily use their computer to find my e-texts in google as to find them in the library's catalog, i don't see much difference. besides, show me one good system -- from any library out there! -- that helps a person find a book that they will like. show me! please! i said it before, and i'll say it again. collaborative filtering does this. spend time _productively_, building a collaborative filtering system. people don't decide what to read based on the info in a marc record. > A remote library in northern India may not be able to > afford the bandwidth to download PG texts. But they can > provide access to a CDROM collection of the PG texts. ok, except now you're talking about something different. putting a c.d. of the e-texts into a brick-and-mortar library -- or indeed, in every residence in india with a computer -- is a great idea. but that has little to do with marc records. > Librarians would love to be able to say > "all copies have been checked out, > but the etext is available in pdf, html and plain text" you'd think so. but michael reports he has encountered resistance. say what you will, i don't think "the absence of marc records" is why. (and when librarians finally decide they _do_ want a copy of the c.d., an absence of those marc records will be of zero consequence to them.) nonetheless, i'm sure their intelligent patrons will be able to find a copy. online. using google. to download. and burn copies for their neighbors. > I'd like to hear one good reason why the catalog shouldn't be > available in as many different formats as is needed > for everyone to find and access PG texts? the best reason of all is because no one seems to want to do the work. most of you say "it's a good idea" (although i haven't heard one single compelling reason _why_), but very few have done anything about it. (kudos to andrew. and what is his experience? "it's hard work!") now, what is your counterargument to that? yeah, that's what i thought. -bowerbird

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Re: [gutvol-d] [BP] The Future of eBooks
by Joshua Hutchinson 10 Nov '04

10 Nov '04

----- Original Message ----- From: Alev Akman <aakman(a)csufresno.edu> > > Maybe if the computer people stuck to "computering" and listened to how the > library world does it? After all, the library sytems and conventions have > been in place for a while. Great! Answer my earlier question then. What fields should be mandatory for our <teiHeader> and which fields should be optional? ie, Author, title, Original publisher = mandatory. Optional? Author birth/death dates? Which printing of the original source we derived from? Others? I'm not a librarian. I need someone knowledgeable to answer these questions. Josh PS If we define good teiHeader information for each work, it becomes a much simpler task for Marcello's cataloging scripts to find all sorts of fun information for the reader.

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