- gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

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

10 Nov '04

brad said: > But this won't be of any help to brick and mortar libraries > who want to integrate PG etexts into their existing catalogs. why is this a priority of any kind? but perhaps i don't understand. just precisely what would it mean for a "brick and mortar library" to "integrate" this e-library into their catalog? that if i walk into the place and go to the catalog to look for a book, it will tell me that it's available online? d'uh, next time i'll stay home, and search google. why should a brick-and-mortar library want this? i thought the goal here was to create a global library, one that is available 24/7 from anyplace in the world, with millions of books that are never "unavailable" because they are "checked out" or "mis-shelved" or "awaiting reshelving" or "going through re-binding" or because "this branch has never had a copy of that book, sorry, you'll have to go to the main library downtown." am i the one who's not seeing things clearly? or are you? > The catalog as it stands represents a lot more effort > than a lot of people realize. I hope people keep that in mind > when they slam the existing catalog. i agree. conversely, there's something perverse about giving people "credit" for working in a way that is clearly not efficient or productive... i could spend hours and hours and hours making a flyer, for instance, telling people how wonderful project gutenberg is, a flyer that would produce little effect out in the world. would you pat me on the back? or would you suggest instead that there is a better use for my energy? i humbly and respectfully suggest there is a better use for your energy. -bowerbird

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

10 Nov '04

Thank you! One quick question jumped out at me. You mention Illustrations. Do you just mean a total number of illustrations or a list of illustrations in the work? Total will be easy... a list of illustrations is a lot of work! :) Josh ----- Original Message ----- From: Alev Akman <aakman(a)csufresno.edu> To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion <gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org> Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] [BP] The Future of eBooks Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2004 11:14:19 -0800 > > Joshua, > > I think the minimum mandatory fields should include: > > Author (including birth/death dates) > Title (and/or Uniform Title) > Subtitle (when it exists) > Editor/Translator/Illustrator > Date the book was published > Physical properties of the "original print work" like number of pages, size > of the book, illustrations, etc. > Notes (Contents for collections, for example) > Call numbers (LC/Dewey) > Subjects > Genre (that's where the Mystery, Historical Fiction, etc would come in) > > That's what I can think of now. Does the list help? > > Alev. > > > At 09:09 AM 11/10/2004, you wrote: > > > >----- 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. > >_______________________________________________ > >gutvol-d mailing list > >gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org > >http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > > > > > >--- > >Incoming mail is certified Virus Free. > >Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com) > >Version: 6.0.783 / Virus Database: 529 - Release Date: 10/25/2004 > > > > > --- > Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. > Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com) > Version: 6.0.783 / Virus Database: 529 - Release Date: 10/25/2004 > > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d >

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

10 Nov '04

josh said: > As with everything else around here, someone has to step up. > You act like you tried before... You didn't. i not only "tried", i _did_ "step up". i developed a whole system to use. all i required was a place to put it. steve even took things a step further, and put up his system in his own space. and nobody went there to support him or got anyone else to go there to do it. (go there, right now, and you'll see it's true.) maybe that's because you are all talk and no action. or maybe it's because there is no demand from users. (certainly not to justify a huge expenditure of effort.) either way, there's no future in _this_ "future of e-books". so i'll be making my way out of here... -bowerbird

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Re: [gutvol-d] [BP] The Future of eBooks
by D. Starner 10 Nov '04

10 Nov '04

Alev Akman writes: > Physical properties of the "original print work" like number of pages, size > of the book, illustrations, etc. How can this be mandatory? We've got a few composite books, that don't have a single print analogue, and many books where it would be hard or arbitrary to find an edition to get this information from. -- ___________________________________________________________ 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 Joshua Hutchinson 10 Nov '04

10 Nov '04

----- Original Message ----- From: "D. Starner" <shalesller(a)writeme.com> > "Joshua Hutchinson" writes: > > > This sounds an awful lot like a Wikipedia entry. I > > think a loose partnership between us and wikipedia > > would be useful here. We have the book and a link > > could be made from the catalog page to that books > > entry in Wikipedia. Then, we have a place to put all > > sorts of information about the book, the author, > > where it was published, the historical context it was > > conceived in, ... just about anything someone wants to add. > > But does every single book in the catalog deserve a Wikipedia > entry? And a lot of details wanted are about the specific > edition, when it was published and what not, that would never > fit for a Wikipedia entry. That's a lot of short entries we'd > be adding to Wikipedia. I was thinking more of the summary/synopsis, author info, genre, etc. The stuff that everyone was saying we need in order to better use the collection. Author, publication date, etc belongs in MARC records or teiHeaders. As far as I know, neither really has a mechanism for holding things like a summary or review information (I suppose since TEI is XML based, that functionality could be added, but I don't think that is the proper place for it). Josh

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

10 Nov '04

----- Original Message ----- From: Bowerbird(a)aol.com > > a wiki for each e-text is still a good idea, but someone else will have to > step up and take responsibility for it. As with everything else around here, someone has to step up. You act like you tried before... You didn't. You basically said, someone set up the wiki, someone decide this is how we are doing it and then you would "shepherd" it. No one is going to be able to wave a magic wand to make things happen. If no one feels strongly enough about something to take control and make it happen ... it ain't gonna happen. Josh

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Re: [gutvol-d] [BP] The Future of eBooks
by D. Starner 10 Nov '04

10 Nov '04

Brad Collins writes: > Cataloging is not simple and it's not easy, and if it's not correct > and consistent it will result in a mess which will do more harm than > good. I've heard that about producing an ebook and about producing an operating system. I don't buy it. An incomplete list of science fiction books still helps. The fact that some of the computer books in the library are sorted under 510 and some under 000, like in the professionally catalogued Oklahoma State Library does not cause the roof to fall in. The worst thing a catalog can do is force you to try and handle things without it, which is what you'd be forced to do if you had no catalog. -- ___________________________________________________________ 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 10 Nov '04

10 Nov '04

i offered, many months ago, to shepard a system that would provide a wiki for every e-text, which would contain all the info about that e-text (in a part of the wiki that was "locked") such as its change-log, and also allow users to write summaries and comments, make error-reports, and hold discussions. nobody provided the disk-space i would've needed to make it work. steve sakoman built a system of his own to do something similar. nobody provided him with the support he needed to make it work. now it appears that the gutvol-d merry-go-round has once again come to this spot as it runs around in circles. at this time, though, i'm heading out of here, because nothing seems to get done here, other than throwing more and more inconsistent e-texts on the pile. (and i might, suggest, humbly, that a pause in _that_ machinery to rethink and plan might be a very good idea at this point in time.) all the good suggestions being made now have been made before, but the process for implementing them seems to be badly broken. if you want to fix _anything_, you will need to fix _that_ first... a wiki for each e-text is still a good idea, but someone else will have to step up and take responsibility for it. -bowerbird

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

10 Nov '04

david starner said: > It does a pretty horrid job at that hey, before i skip on out of here, i get to agree with david for once. the catalog just ain't gonna help someone know what kind of book they'd like to read. (and a marc record won't help them either.) that's a job that collaborative filtering will eventually do much better than anything you can do in the form of a catalog of any type. (and the collaborative filtering that amazon uses is absolutely primitive compared to what it could be.) just make e-texts. clean, consistent, clear e-texts. do that, and the rest will take care of itself... -bowerbird

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Re: [gutvol-d] draft TEI conventions and larger example file
by Jeroen.Hellingman＠kabelfoon.nl 10 Nov '04

10 Nov '04

Op 10-11-2004 04:46, schreef jij: > <Jeroen.Hellingman(a)kabelfoon.nl> writes: > > > I use foreign exclusively as a holder for the lang attribute. > > My problem with that, is it means there's no way to transform a > document such that the foreign words are marked differently from > the emphasized words, or not marked at all. Well, the issue of course is that you first have to tag foreign words as foreign, and emphasized words as emphasized, now what if a foreign word is emphasized? The original typography will not always allow you to distinguish those cases. That is the core reason for me using <hi> instead of <emph> or <foreign> or something semantic: I don't always know the intended semantic. However, it is fairly easy to, for example, color all German words in a text green, based on the value of the lang attribute, or to print in roman all italic words in a certain language. Jeroen

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