for 32 days, i am showing samples of the problems
with the text in e-books from the internet archive...

***

nobody bothered to comment on yesterday's example,
which likely means that nobody's even looking at these.

which is fine.  i'm a self-starter.

yesterday's scan was a page that had been "annotated"...
that is, a library patron had underlined one sentence and
bracketed a few more, and "corrected" a few printer errors.

such marks are not that unusual if we remember that these
are books that are in a library, and have been checked out
by who-knows-how-many patrons along their long journey.

it might be "unfair" to judge uncorrected o.c.r. on such a page,
because we cannot expect o.c.r. to overcome marks on a page.

but that's the _point_, you see.  these _are_ library books, and
we can _expect_ that they might be marked on, and we cannot
expect o.c.r. to compensate, which is just one more reason why
we _need_ to make a good effort to actually _correct_ the o.c.r.

***

nonetheless, it's not difficult to find examples of terrible o.c.r.
even if we rule out any pages with markings made by patrons...

so, for today's example, i'll again use verne's "around the world",
and focus on a page that has no such patron-markings on it...

***

here's the scan of page 69:
>   http://www.archive.org/stream/tourofworldineig00vern#page/69

and here's the o.c.r. of the entire book:
>   http://ia310838.us.archive.org/0/items/tourofworldineig00vern/tourofworldineig00vern_djvu.txt

and here's the o.c.r. of page 69:
>  
>   Thii Tour of the World in Eiyldy Days. 69
>  
>   " Be so good, landlord, as not to swear, but
>   remember this : cats were formerly considered, in
>   India, as sacred animals. That was a good time."
>   *' For the cats, mv lord 1 "
>   *' Perhaps for the travellers as well ! "
>   After which Mr. Fogg quietly continued his
>   dinner. Fix had gone on shore fchortly after ^Ir.
>   Fogg, and his first destination was the head-
>   quarters of the Bombay police. He made himself
>   known as a London detective, told his business
>   at Bombay, and the position of affairs relative to
>   the supposed robber, and nervously asked if a
>   warrant had arrived from London. It had not
>   reached the office; indeed, there had not yet been
>   time for it to arrive. Fix w^as sorely disajDpointed,
>   and tried to obtain an order of arrest from the
>   director of the Bombay police. This the director
>   refused, as the matter concerned the London of-
>   fice, which alone could legally deliver the warrant.
>   Fix did not insist, and was fain to resign himself
>   to aw^ait the an-ival of the important document ;
>   but he was determined not to lose sight of the
>   mysterious rogue as long as he stayed in Bombay.
>   He did not doubt for a moment, any more than
>   Passepartout, that Phileas Fogg would remain
>   there, at least until it was time for the warrant
>   to arrive.
>  
>   Passeparto\it, however, had no sooner heard his
>   master's orders on leaving the Mongolia, than he
>   saw at once that they were to leave Bombay as
>   they had done Suez and Paris, and that the journey
>   would be extended at least as far as Calcutta, and
>   perhaps beyond that place. He began to ask him-

i count at least a half-dozen misrecognized words there,
and another half-dozen other o.c.r. errors of various kinds.

-bowerbird