On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 11:45 PM, Greg Newby <gbnewby@pglaf.org> wrote:
This approach would be problematic, since the PG titles are considered as published when *we* release them. Published in Urbana, Illinois. Published by Project Gutenberg.
It might be desirable to include something about original publication dates of the source material(s) we used, but I think that's not consistent with (say) Dublin Core metadata for our books.
Then we bolt on fields that give original publication date, original publisher and place of publication. I'm a scholar. I *need* that info. The original PG intent, to obscure the source of the texts (and in some cases to combine texts) was a mistake, and I'm glad that the policy has been abandoned.
In case you are thinking, "but what if we try to accurately represent the old printed book, in our new eBook," it's still not appropriate to claim that the old book's metata applies to our new eBook. Furthermore, we'll have scholars and other riffraff complaining that our book is not, in fact, the same.
But there should be a place IN the metadata to credit the source of the PG version. How far we can depart from the original version is another discussion. We have to balance fidelity to the original with readability in the present (and usability on ereaders). There's ambiguity and difficulty there. I am happy that DP has been moving towards more scholarly editions, with many PPers noting which changes have been in the text, as emendations of typos in the original.
Well, that's in there. Original is in the book, and the metadata. Updates are in the book.
But none of that is easily searchable! The PG interface allows us to search only by au and title. Google and IA and Manybooks aren't any better, really. Is there any organization out there that has done it right? -- Karen Lofstrom