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Book Collecting Guide
by James Adcock 20 Feb '14

20 Feb '14

Obviously intended to be self-serving, but the below AbeBooks guide contains useful stuff: http://www.abebooks.com/books/RareBooks/collecting-guide/book-collecting-gui de.shtml

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Abbyy announces Finereader 12
by James Adcock 20 Feb '14

20 Feb '14

http://finereader.abbyy.com/ I haven't personally tried this one. I'm still running Finereader 11, which I am quite happy with.

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Fwd: Inadequate bibliographic records for translations, and thoughts on The Count of Monte Cristo
by Matt Hickford 10 Feb '14

10 Feb '14

Hi all. I think translations should have more bibliographic information. For example, consider the record for the Count of Monte Cristo http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1184#bibrec . The following vital information is missing: * That the author Alexandre Dumas wrote the book in French, and that this is a translation * Who did the translation, and when it was first published Information about the translation is important because translations can be copyright while the original work is public domain. * * * Also, this particular translation is questionable. For example, in the story, Captain Edmond Dantes is accused of aiding the exiled Napolean, by an anonymous letter to the king's attorney. The letter is read and re-read several times during the adventure. The wording varies each time! (I assume Dumas was not so sloppy in the original) > "The honorable, the king's attorney, is informed by a friend of the throne and religion, that one Edmond Dantes, mate of the ship Pharaon, arrived this morning from Smyrna, after having touched at Naples and Porto-Ferrajo, has been intrusted by Murat with a letter for the usurper, and by the usurper with a letter for the Bonapartist committee in Paris. Proof of this crime will be found on arresting him, for the letter will be found upon him, or at his father's, or in his cabin on board the Pharaon." > > "'The king's attorney is informed by a friend to the throne and the religions institutions of his country, that one named Edmond Dantes, mate of the ship Pharaon, this day arrived from Smyrna, after having touched at Naples and Porto-Ferrajo, has been the bearer of a letter from Murat to the usurper, and again taken charge of another letter from the usurper to the Bonapartist club in Paris. Ample corroboration of this statement may be obtained by arresting the above-mentioned Edmond Dantes, who either carries the letter for Paris about with him, or has it at his father's abode. Should it not be found in the possession of father or son, then it will assuredly be discovered in the cabin belonging to the said Dantes on board the Pharaon.'" > > Dantes paused a moment, then said, "This is it, word for word: 'The king's attorney is informed by a friend to the throne and religion, that one Edmond Dantes, mate on board the Pharaon, this day arrived from Smyrna, after having touched at Naples and Porto-Ferrajo, has been intrusted by Murat with a packet for the usurper; again, by the usurper, with a letter for the Bonapartist Club in Paris. This proof of his guilt may be procured by his immediate arrest, as the letter will be found either about his person, at his father's residence, or in his cabin on board the Pharaon.'" > > "The king's attorney is informed by a friend to the throne and religion that one Edmond Dantes, second in command on board the Pharaon, this day arrived from Smyrna, after having touched at Naples and Porto-Ferrajo, is the bearer of a letter from Murat to the usurper, and of another letter from the usurper to the Bonapartist club in Paris. Ample corroboration of this statement may be obtained by arresting the above-mentioned Edmond Dantes, who either carries the letter for Paris about with him, or has it at his father's abode. Should it not be found in possession of either father or son, then it will assuredly be discovered in the cabin belonging to the said Dantes on board the Pharaon." * * * What do you think? -Matt ps. I think Project Gutenberg ought to have public comment pages that everyone can use. A private mailing list, that requires you sign up—and wait a day for your account to activate—before you can even read it, is prohibitive for many potential contributors. pps. Fourth time lucky.

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ABBYY OCR sale
by James Adcock 23 Dec '13

23 Dec '13

ABBYY is having a sale on their popular Finereader OCR version 11 until the 29th. Half off for "normal" people. As low as $20 for a student upgrade.

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Fujitsu Scansnap SV600 scanner
by Al Haines 12 Dec '13

12 Dec '13

http://solutions.ca.fujitsu.com/products/scansnap/sv600/ >From what I've seen/read of it on Youtube and in reviews, it looks like an interesting alternative to standard flatbed scanners. Has anyone out there seen it in action or had any experience with it? Al

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10 years ago
by bowerbird 11 Dec '13

11 Dec '13

i meant to note the 10th anniversary of the celebration in northern california in honor of the 10,000th p.g. e-text, which was centered on the date of december 10, 2003 because -- if memory serves -- that was the birthday of michael hart's father. goodness, how fast time passes... -bowerbird

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#44444 is at the door
by bowerbird 11 Dec '13

11 Dec '13

#44444 coming up any minute now. been looking 4ward to it 4 a while... seems like as good a time as any to re-assert my please-god-please plea to stop the mad rush of adding "more" and go back and clean up the mess... of course, i expect the same result that i got at 10,000, 20,000, 25,000, and all the other times i begged you. the irony is you think you're making "progress". -bowerbird

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"The Art of Google Books"
by James Adcock 09 Dec '13

09 Dec '13

http://books.google.com/books?id=PXAaAQAAMAAJ <http://books.google.com/books?id=PXAaAQAAMAAJ&dq=good&pg=PA67#v=onepage&q&f =false> &dq=good&pg=PA67#v=onepage&q&f=false http://theartofgooglebooks.tumblr.com/

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happy thanksgiving
by bowerbird 28 Nov '13

28 Nov '13

happy thanksgiving/ hanukkah/holidays to all the hard-working project gutenberg volunteers. -bowerbird

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Quality at PG
by Jon Hurst 07 Oct '13

07 Oct '13

Last Winter I did a bit of investigation into methodologies for improving the quality of works in PG's library. Rather than write a long report, I will skip to the conclusions. 1. The best method for getting a "better version" into PG with the least amount of effort by any one person is: i. Choose an edition from archive.org based on information from a respected academic source, e.g. the "Notes on the Text" section section of an Oxford World's Classics edition. ii. Get DP to digitise it. iii. Improve the DP version by comparing it against the extant PG text. The found error rate for a DP produced text averaged 1 error per 10 pages, a rate I consider more that worth the effort of correcting. Access to F2 output and page images is required for this step. Page images are nicely archived at DP, F2 is more of a problem. It is perfectly possible and useful to find errors in editions as different as the 1818 and 1831 editions of Frankenstein. 2. The PG errata system is utterly broken. I generated errata for the new Huck Finn and sent it to the original contributor, who confirmed the errors. This is errata against a known edition with known page images, and even in this best case scenario neither I nor the original contributor managed to get the text updated. PG should really be considered a write once library, and all references to an errata system should be removed from the site to avoid people wasting their time. 3. The single biggest impediment to improving quality is the PG policy of never replacing a text or in any way advertising the existence of a superior one. A modern DP produced text sourced from a carefully selected archive.org print edition will almost certainly be superior. 4. Very, very few people access PG texts via PG. Normal people go to the Kindle store or to the iTunes store. As such the greatest contribution that PG can make is to provide a digitisation of a well regarded print edition and get the words and punctuation right. Any sort of reasonably sane HTML skeleton, including those produced by DP, is fine. Master formats are not required. * * * * * Based on these conclusions, my recommendation: For each major text, one of the PTB (i.e. Greg, Marcello or a WWer) needs to select a well regarded print edition from archive.org and commission DP to digitise it with the assurance that the extant text will be replaced. A link to the archive.org PDF needs to be added, and DP needs to keep page images and F2 available for anyone willing and able to do the edition comparison; errata from such an edition comparison needs to be prioritised. * * * * * And no, I don't think that there is any chance that this will happen. I think PG is rudderless and the PTB are unwilling or incapable of taking the sort of meaningful action required. From a user standpoint, for "classics" I have given up on PG entirely, preferring paperbacks from a reputable publisher, despite all the advantages that e-reading brings. It saddens me greatly, because PG should be a great "open" project on a level with GNU/Linux and Wikipedia. Then again, if Linus Torvalds had mandated that no line of code could be changed in case it upset its contributor, and Jimmy Wales had locked down updates to 4 people, those projects probably wouldn't be very good either. Regards Jon

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