Re: [gutvol-d] Moving and Removing eBooks
I do remember a discussion last month about a file format that is completely unaccesible (the reader no longer exists). There is one or two ebooks in the PG collection in this format. There was call to deprecate those versions into an OLD subfolder (or something like that) so that people coming to the site weren't confused. No one advocated deletion, only better cataloging. That is probably where Michael's dozen is coming from, because many people thought this was a sensible step to take (and basically only Michael thought it wasn't). Josh ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Dyck" <jmdyck@ibiblio.org> To: "Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion" <gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org> Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] Moving and Removing eBooks Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 12:27:47 -0800
Michael Hart wrote:
However, there are at least a dozen or two very outspoken volunteers at Project Gutenberg among a dozen or two thousand of such volunteers, who would prefer to delete many of the original Project Gutenberg eBooks in favor of replacing them with something else, as opposed to just working on them to bring them up to the standards of the modern era of eBooks.
This sounds like an exaggeration to me. It's true that (on January 4th) D. Starner asked[1] if we could "get rid of" PG's World Library Editions of Shakespeare, and appeared to be in favour of doing so. See: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/2005-January/001133.html However,
(a) I don't see that anyone agreed with the deletion. So that's one outspoken volunteer, not "at least a dozen or two".
(b) I don't see anyone recommending the deletion of any other books.
If there are posts I've missed that would support the assertion above, feel free to give links to the archive.
Mind you, that's assuming that the outspokenness has happened on gutvol-d. Did it happen somewhere else?
By the way, I'm curious as to why D. Starner would like to get rid of those editions. Are they particularly bad/questionable for some reason?
Would someone be willing to do all the work to donate a Britannica 11th to Project Gutenberg this year if they thought it would be removed from Project Gutenberg a decade after it was first included?
Yes, I would. And if you ask "Why would you go to all that effort, only to have the results deleted in 10 years?", I would point out that it would only be PG's copy that's deleted; the results of my work would live on, elsewhere on the web.
-Michael
_______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d
On Thu, 20 Jan 2005, Joshua Hutchinson wrote:
I do remember a discussion last month about a file format that is completely unaccesible (the reader no longer exists). There is one or two ebooks in the PG collection in this format. There was call to deprecate those versions into an OLD subfolder (or something like that) so that people coming to the site weren't confused.
Everyone refers to their own suggestions as "better". . .as "reform," etc.
No one advocated deletion, only better cataloging.
This is why the suject says both "Moving" and "Removing". . .the removing refers to suggestions for other than the Folio file mentioned previously, including eBook #100, the Complete Works of Shakespeare. As for "only better cataloging". . .the obvious thing is simply to point plainly to both versions, with a note that the Folio format requires a proprietary reader.
That is probably where Michael's dozen is coming from, because many people thought this was a sensible step to take (and basically only Michael thought it wasn't).
Actually, the dozen comes from various discussions we've had over time. Some of us try to remember the past as we plan for the future.
Josh
----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Dyck" <jmdyck@ibiblio.org> To:
[snip] Michael
Michael Hart wrote:
there are at least a dozen or two very outspoken volunteers at Project Gutenberg among a dozen or two thousand of such volunteers, who would prefer to delete many of the original Project Gutenberg eBooks
... the removing refers to suggestions ... including eBook #100, the Complete Works of Shakespeare.
... the dozen comes from various discussions we've had over time.
Some of us try to remember the past as we plan for the future.
I'm trying to remember the past, but so far I'm not remembering it as you do. Could you be a bit more specific, to help jog my memory, and provide a basis for searching the archive? Could you name two or three other ebooks whose deletion was sought/recommended/suggested? -Michael
On Fri, 21 Jan 2005, Michael Dyck wrote:
Michael Hart wrote:
there are at least a dozen or two very outspoken volunteers at Project Gutenberg among a dozen or two thousand of such volunteers, who would prefer to delete many of the original Project Gutenberg eBooks
... the removing refers to suggestions ... including eBook #100, the Complete Works of Shakespeare.
... the dozen comes from various discussions we've had over time.
Some of us try to remember the past as we plan for the future.
I'm trying to remember the past, but so far I'm not remembering it as you do. Could you be a bit more specific, to help jog my memory, and provide a basis for searching the archive? Could you name two or three other ebooks whose deletion was sought/recommended/suggested?
These conversations have appeared on various listservers, and over a long period of time, dating all the way back to the Bible #10, Roget's #22, the Bible #30, Sophocles #31, Jekyll and Hyde #42-43, The Gift of the Magi [no # at the time], Frankenstein #84 and 84a, and, of couse, the Complete Shakespeare #100. In more recent times such suggestions have appeared online and offline among the member of "The Book People," "The eBook List," "The PDA-eBook List" and I'm sure there were even more. In addition, there are often such discussions immediately before during and after the release of various items. We are currently discussing how to present the Mahabharata, which as long as the Bible and Shakespeare combined into one book. Some want to present it as a single huge file, while I, having written a paper on it in college, see a great value in presenting it both in a book by book format, as well as one huge file, for a wider range of useful searches. I certainly prefer to have both options available with Shakespeare and the Bible, and we have received many thank you notes for the works David Widger has so kindly prepared in a similar manner. Of course, there is a wide range of years and events between those two paragraphs I mentioned earlier, including all the Dante translations and editions, starting with those surrounding #1,000, and proceeding right up to today, when I received a message stating a new translation is now becoming available. I sent off the copyright permission request, and hopefully we'll have yet another Dante shortly. Those are just the ones off the top of my head, but I am sure we also talked about combining all the Benjamin Jowett translations, and many others, some of which combinations are created elsewhere for scholars to search, some of which come back to us, and some of which I am sure we never hear about at all. In the end everyone is free to create their own PG collection as want and I am sure that include a lot of things people have done that will never become popular, and some that will. Once we get some requests for any certain presentation we always want to give our readers what they want, in addition to what our volunteer base wants for themselves. Michael S. Hart
Michael Hart wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jan 2005, Michael Dyck wrote:
Michael Hart wrote:
there are at least a dozen or two very outspoken volunteers at Project Gutenberg among a dozen or two thousand of such volunteers, who would prefer to delete many of the original Project Gutenberg eBooks
... the removing refers to suggestions ... including eBook #100, the Complete Works of Shakespeare.
... the dozen comes from various discussions we've had over time.
Some of us try to remember the past as we plan for the future.
I'm trying to remember the past, but so far I'm not remembering it as you do. Could you be a bit more specific, to help jog my memory, and provide a basis for searching the archive? Could you name two or three other ebooks whose deletion was sought/recommended/suggested?
These conversations have appeared on various listservers, and over a long period of time, dating all the way back to the Bible #10, Roget's #22, the Bible #30, Sophocles #31, Jekyll and Hyde #42-43, The Gift of the Magi [no # at the time], Frankenstein #84 and 84a, and, of couse, the Complete Shakespeare #100.
...
In addition, there are often such discussions immediately before during and after the release of various items. We are currently discussing how to present the Mahabharata, which as long as the Bible and Shakespeare combined into one book. Some want to present it as a single huge file, while I, having written a paper on it in college, see a great value in presenting it both in a book by book format, as well as one huge file, for a wider range of useful searches. I certainly prefer to have both options available with Shakespeare and the Bible, and we have received many thank you notes for the works David Widger has so kindly prepared in a similar manner.
It sounds like this is talking about cases where there's discussion about whether to post a submission as a single ebook or as multiple parts (or both). Whereas I thought we were talking about cases where someone advocates the removal of a submission (or the replacement of one with another). Do you see these as the same issue? They seem quite different to me. -Michael Dyck
On Sat, 22 Jan 2005, Michael Dyck wrote:
Michael Hart wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jan 2005, Michael Dyck wrote:
Michael Hart wrote:
there are at least a dozen or two very outspoken volunteers at Project Gutenberg among a dozen or two thousand of such volunteers, who would prefer to delete many of the original Project Gutenberg eBooks
... the removing refers to suggestions ... including eBook #100, the Complete Works of Shakespeare.
... the dozen comes from various discussions we've had over time.
Some of us try to remember the past as we plan for the future.
I'm trying to remember the past, but so far I'm not remembering it as you do. Could you be a bit more specific, to help jog my memory, and provide a basis for searching the archive? Could you name two or three other ebooks whose deletion was sought/recommended/suggested?
These conversations have appeared on various listservers, and over a long period of time, dating all the way back to the Bible #10, Roget's #22, the Bible #30, Sophocles #31, Jekyll and Hyde #42-43, The Gift of the Magi [no # at the time], Frankenstein #84 and 84a, and, of couse, the Complete Shakespeare #100.
...
In addition, there are often such discussions immediately before during and after the release of various items. We are currently discussing how to present the Mahabharata, which as long as the Bible and Shakespeare combined into one book. Some want to present it as a single huge file, while I, having written a paper on it in college, see a great value in presenting it both in a book by book format, as well as one huge file, for a wider range of useful searches. I certainly prefer to have both options available with Shakespeare and the Bible, and we have received many thank you notes for the works David Widger has so kindly prepared in a similar manner.
It sounds like this is talking about cases where there's discussion about whether to post a submission as a single ebook or as multiple parts (or both). Whereas I thought we were talking about cases where someone advocates the removal of a submission (or the replacement of one with another). Do you see these as the same issue? They seem quite different to me.
Sorry, I should have been more specific about these examples. In many case people wanted to delete files we were offering or preparing to offer, or to move all of a certain class of work into one single file, and delete the individual files. This sort of discussion happens more often than you might think. Here are a more examples I came up with overnight: The US Bill Of Rights Peter Pan The Night Before Christmas Far From The Madding Crowd President Clinton's First Inaugural Speech The Little Prince The 11th Britannica The Oxford Book Of English Verse The Voyages Of Dr. Dolittle Siddhartha Gone With The Wind The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists Not to mention JRR Tolkien.
Michael Hart wrote:
On Sat, 22 Jan 2005, Michael Dyck wrote:
It sounds like this is talking about cases where there's discussion about whether to post a submission as a single ebook or as multiple parts (or both). Whereas I thought we were talking about cases where someone advocates the removal of a submission (or the replacement of one with another). Do you see these as the same issue? They seem quite different to me.
Sorry, I should have been more specific about these examples.
In many case people wanted to delete files we were offering or preparing to offer, or to move all of a certain class of work into one single file, and delete the individual files. This sort of discussion happens more often than you might think.
Right. I understand that there can be debate about -- whether PG has the legal right to post a work, and -- the best way to package a (long or multi-part) work, but neither of these sounds particularly Orwellian. What I was talking about, and what (it seems) you were talking about when you started this thread (about "rewriting history"), was the removal of existing PG texts, and their replacement by different texts (i.e., different editions, not just a repackaging of the same content). You gave the example of ebook #100, the Complete Works of Shakespeare, whose removal was recently suggested, and analogized this to the hypothetical submission of the Britannica 11th this year, only to have it removed in a decade. So, leaving aside cases where someone says "You don't have the necessary permission to put that work online", or "This work would be better split into parts / joined into one", do you have examples (like ebook #100) where someone has advocated the removal of an existing PG text, and (optionally) its replacement by a significantly different text? -Michael Dyck
On Sun, 23 Jan 2005, Michael Dyck wrote:
Michael Hart wrote:
On Sat, 22 Jan 2005, Michael Dyck wrote:
It sounds like this is talking about cases where there's discussion about whether to post a submission as a single ebook or as multiple parts (or both). Whereas I thought we were talking about cases where someone advocates the removal of a submission (or the replacement of one with another). Do you see these as the same issue? They seem quite different to me.
Sorry, I should have been more specific about these examples.
In many case people wanted to delete files we were offering or preparing to offer, or to move all of a certain class of work into one single file, and delete the individual files. This sort of discussion happens more often than you might think.
Right. I understand that there can be debate about -- whether PG has the legal right to post a work, and -- the best way to package a (long or multi-part) work, but neither of these sounds particularly Orwellian.
What I was talking about, and what (it seems) you were talking about when you started this thread (about "rewriting history"), was the removal of existing PG texts, and their replacement by different texts (i.e., different editions, not just a repackaging of the same content). You gave the example of ebook #100, the Complete Works of Shakespeare, whose removal was recently suggested, and analogized this to the hypothetical submission of the Britannica 11th this year, only to have it removed in a decade.
So, leaving aside cases where someone says "You don't have the necessary permission to put that work online", or "This work would be better split into parts / joined into one", do you have examples (like ebook #100) where someone has advocated the removal of an existing PG text, and (optionally) its replacement by a significantly different text?
The most obvious examples have been, approximately chronlogically: The Bill of Rights, to be subsumed into either The Constitution, or into the complete amendments, back when we were considering separate files for all three. I didn't want to erase the history that the entire Constitution had been deemed too large in the 70s. Frankenstein, some people really hated a particularly bad edition. I don't want to pretend that bad editions don't exist, or that they might have been the only edition available to the original volunteer. I am only too happy to write notes about this in the books and index, but don't want to sweep the whole idea under the carpet. There have always been those who say only their favorite edition should be posted. BTW, this is often a much larger problem with translations, which I did not include much in my list. Shakespeare and The Britannica are obviously the two most recent major examples, and another major example was Darwin. Luckily we had a Darwin expert who insisted on keeping the various editions. As for the recent request to delete Shakespeare #100, I never heard back from my reply, so I never got to the bottom line reasoning behind that request. Perhaps it was only because of copyright, or because it was such an early effort that it needed proofing to bring it up to today's standards. In either case, I don't like the idea of people suggesting we delete files for either reason. As for the Britannica, there have been such wide and varied discussions on this across listservers that there is probably too much to discuss. I haven't insisted that we continue with the Britannica, it was mostly to prove such a thing could be done when we did the first volume, and there are now other source. I would suggest we eventually use one or more of the other sources so we don't create more work for ourselves, but I would never agree that such a seminal work be deleted. People have suggested that some kind of "Reader Advisory" be included, but I don't notice them saying the same thing about Mark Twain, Darwin, or any other works. Perhaps their concern is that the eBook version might be confused with more modern editions. This could possibly be remedied with a statement in each file stating that these articles were written by experts about what they had learned 100 years ago. Personally, _I_ would LOVE to see some comparison between what was thought of as "fact" or "best theory" over periods of time, but I would not approve of sweeping those under the carpet. Oh, a bit more on Shakespeare, I think there was also a discussion on whether we should include the First Folio, since it is full of originaly typography and other difficulties. . .but since it was such as seminal work, we decided to include it. As for translations, obviously there there were unauthorized editions of most of Jules Verne, some just horrible, and I actually agreed not to use one of those, even though I had personally typed half of it in. There is also great, and worthwhile, concern about the Longfellow translation of Dante. However, it is also an example that should be preserved as an indication of history, even if we recommend the Cary translation or any other as being of better quality. I would tend to include both the authorized and unauthorized editions, even, or especially, of such books as Uncle Tom's Cabin, which became the first million-seller, perhaps ONLY because of unauthorized editions. In most of these cases, I prefer to keep the doors open wide, perhaps with warnings, rather than to keep them either closed, or make the readers go through several doorways to find what we have. Thanks! Michael PS BTW, I forgot to mention at least one other example before, the NUSIRG manual. . .we were asked to delete the plain text version. . .at the request of the copyright holder. We considered making an issue of it, since this was the era when the major players were trying to eliminate plain text altogether, but, in the end, we decided that would hurt our future relationships with donors more than it would help in the preservation of plain text. Of course, now nearly everyone can read the file in plain text without the help of all the work we/I did in the conversion. [And this one was VERY difficult to convert, if you take a look.]
Just a quick addendum (though I'm not sure if it fits Michael's mold): I've received about a dozen requests to remove or expurgate our Rodwell translations of the Koran. These have all come from folks who believed his introduction to the text to be offensive. FWIW. -- Greg On Tue, Jan 25, 2005 at 09:04:37AM -0800, Michael Hart wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jan 2005, Michael Dyck wrote:
Michael Hart wrote:
On Sat, 22 Jan 2005, Michael Dyck wrote:
It sounds like this is talking about cases where there's discussion about whether to post a submission as a single ebook or as multiple parts (or both). Whereas I thought we were talking about cases where someone advocates the removal of a submission (or the replacement of one with another). Do you see these as the same issue? They seem quite different to me.
Sorry, I should have been more specific about these examples.
In many case people wanted to delete files we were offering or preparing to offer, or to move all of a certain class of work into one single file, and delete the individual files. This sort of discussion happens more often than you might think.
Right. I understand that there can be debate about -- whether PG has the legal right to post a work, and -- the best way to package a (long or multi-part) work, but neither of these sounds particularly Orwellian.
What I was talking about, and what (it seems) you were talking about when you started this thread (about "rewriting history"), was the removal of existing PG texts, and their replacement by different texts (i.e., different editions, not just a repackaging of the same content). You gave the example of ebook #100, the Complete Works of Shakespeare, whose removal was recently suggested, and analogized this to the hypothetical submission of the Britannica 11th this year, only to have it removed in a decade.
So, leaving aside cases where someone says "You don't have the necessary permission to put that work online", or "This work would be better split into parts / joined into one", do you have examples (like ebook #100) where someone has advocated the removal of an existing PG text, and (optionally) its replacement by a significantly different text?
The most obvious examples have been, approximately chronlogically:
The Bill of Rights, to be subsumed into either The Constitution, or into the complete amendments, back when we were considering separate files for all three. I didn't want to erase the history that the entire Constitution had been deemed too large in the 70s.
Frankenstein, some people really hated a particularly bad edition. I don't want to pretend that bad editions don't exist, or that they might have been the only edition available to the original volunteer. I am only too happy to write notes about this in the books and index, but don't want to sweep the whole idea under the carpet. There have always been those who say only their favorite edition should be posted. BTW, this is often a much larger problem with translations, which I did not include much in my list.
Shakespeare and The Britannica are obviously the two most recent major examples, and another major example was Darwin. Luckily we had a Darwin expert who insisted on keeping the various editions.
As for the recent request to delete Shakespeare #100, I never heard back from my reply, so I never got to the bottom line reasoning behind that request. Perhaps it was only because of copyright, or because it was such an early effort that it needed proofing to bring it up to today's standards.
In either case, I don't like the idea of people suggesting we delete files for either reason.
As for the Britannica, there have been such wide and varied discussions on this across listservers that there is probably too much to discuss. I haven't insisted that we continue with the Britannica, it was mostly to prove such a thing could be done when we did the first volume, and there are now other source. I would suggest we eventually use one or more of the other sources so we don't create more work for ourselves, but I would never agree that such a seminal work be deleted.
People have suggested that some kind of "Reader Advisory" be included, but I don't notice them saying the same thing about Mark Twain, Darwin, or any other works. Perhaps their concern is that the eBook version might be confused with more modern editions. This could possibly be remedied with a statement in each file stating that these articles were written by experts about what they had learned 100 years ago.
Personally, _I_ would LOVE to see some comparison between what was thought of as "fact" or "best theory" over periods of time, but I would not approve of sweeping those under the carpet.
Oh, a bit more on Shakespeare, I think there was also a discussion on whether we should include the First Folio, since it is full of originaly typography and other difficulties. . .but since it was such as seminal work, we decided to include it.
As for translations, obviously there there were unauthorized editions of most of Jules Verne, some just horrible, and I actually agreed not to use one of those, even though I had personally typed half of it in.
There is also great, and worthwhile, concern about the Longfellow translation of Dante. However, it is also an example that should be preserved as an indication of history, even if we recommend the Cary translation or any other as being of better quality.
I would tend to include both the authorized and unauthorized editions, even, or especially, of such books as Uncle Tom's Cabin, which became the first million-seller, perhaps ONLY because of unauthorized editions.
In most of these cases, I prefer to keep the doors open wide, perhaps with warnings, rather than to keep them either closed, or make the readers go through several doorways to find what we have.
Thanks!
Michael
PS
BTW, I forgot to mention at least one other example before, the NUSIRG manual. . .we were asked to delete the plain text version. . .at the request of the copyright holder. We considered making an issue of it, since this was the era when the major players were trying to eliminate plain text altogether, but, in the end, we decided that would hurt our future relationships with donors more than it would help in the preservation of plain text. Of course, now nearly everyone can read the file in plain text without the help of all the work we/I did in the conversion. [And this one was VERY difficult to convert, if you take a look.]
_______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d
Isn't this an accepted translation of Koran? I don't see amazon.com withdrawing it from its site. There is a positive review posted for this translation which goes.. "To translate the Quran is an almost impossible task. The beauty of the Arabic language and the complexity of the text makes it very difficult to convey in english. Rodwell's translation uses language closer to that of the King James Bible to help convey the dignity of the Holy Quran. If you want to take a scholarly look at the Quran, you should read several translations. If however, you would like just one version for reference and to get a general idea of what the Quran gives to humanity, this is the book to get." As long as we have various translations of Koran, I don't see a problem with keeping the Rodwell version in PG. On the other hand, as a librarian, I have many objections to its withdrawal. Besides what I remember from my limited religious education, Koran can't be translated; it can be interpreted. In this case, it is just one person's interpretation of Koran. Alev. At 10:31 AM 1/25/2005, you wrote:
Just a quick addendum (though I'm not sure if it fits Michael's mold): I've received about a dozen requests to remove or expurgate our Rodwell translations of the Koran. These have all come from folks who believed his introduction to the text to be offensive.
FWIW. -- Greg
On Tue, Jan 25, 2005 at 09:04:37AM -0800, Michael Hart wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jan 2005, Michael Dyck wrote:
Michael Hart wrote:
On Sat, 22 Jan 2005, Michael Dyck wrote:
It sounds like this is talking about cases where there's discussion about whether to post a submission as a single ebook or as multiple parts (or both). Whereas I thought we were talking about cases where someone advocates the removal of a submission (or the replacement of one with another). Do you see these as the same issue? They seem quite different to me.
Sorry, I should have been more specific about these examples.
In many case people wanted to delete files we were offering or preparing to offer, or to move all of a certain class of work into one single file, and delete the individual files. This sort of discussion happens more often than you might think.
Right. I understand that there can be debate about -- whether PG has the legal right to post a work, and -- the best way to package a (long or multi-part) work, but neither of these sounds particularly Orwellian.
What I was talking about, and what (it seems) you were talking about when you started this thread (about "rewriting history"), was the removal of existing PG texts, and their replacement by different texts (i.e., different editions, not just a repackaging of the same content). You gave the example of ebook #100, the Complete Works of Shakespeare, whose removal was recently suggested, and analogized this to the hypothetical submission of the Britannica 11th this year, only to have it removed in a decade.
So, leaving aside cases where someone says "You don't have the necessary permission to put that work online", or "This work would be better split into parts / joined into one", do you have examples (like ebook #100) where someone has advocated the removal of an existing PG text, and (optionally) its replacement by a significantly different text?
The most obvious examples have been, approximately chronlogically:
The Bill of Rights, to be subsumed into either The Constitution, or into the complete amendments, back when we were considering separate files for all three. I didn't want to erase the history that the entire Constitution had been deemed too large in the 70s.
Frankenstein, some people really hated a particularly bad edition. I don't want to pretend that bad editions don't exist, or that they might have been the only edition available to the original volunteer. I am only too happy to write notes about this in the books and index, but don't want to sweep the whole idea under the carpet. There have always been those who say only their favorite edition should be posted. BTW, this is often a much larger problem with translations, which I did not include much in my list.
Shakespeare and The Britannica are obviously the two most recent major examples, and another major example was Darwin. Luckily we had a Darwin expert who insisted on keeping the various editions.
As for the recent request to delete Shakespeare #100, I never heard back from my reply, so I never got to the bottom line reasoning behind that request. Perhaps it was only because of copyright, or because it was such an early effort that it needed proofing to bring it up to today's standards.
In either case, I don't like the idea of people suggesting we delete files for either reason.
As for the Britannica, there have been such wide and varied discussions on this across listservers that there is probably too much to discuss. I haven't insisted that we continue with the Britannica, it was mostly to prove such a thing could be done when we did the first volume, and there are now other source. I would suggest we eventually use one or more of the other sources so we don't create more work for ourselves, but I would never agree that such a seminal work be deleted.
People have suggested that some kind of "Reader Advisory" be included, but I don't notice them saying the same thing about Mark Twain, Darwin, or any other works. Perhaps their concern is that the eBook version might be confused with more modern editions. This could possibly be remedied with a statement in each file stating that these articles were written by experts about what they had learned 100 years ago.
Personally, _I_ would LOVE to see some comparison between what was thought of as "fact" or "best theory" over periods of time, but I would not approve of sweeping those under the carpet.
Oh, a bit more on Shakespeare, I think there was also a discussion on whether we should include the First Folio, since it is full of originaly typography and other difficulties. . .but since it was such as seminal work, we decided to include it.
As for translations, obviously there there were unauthorized editions of most of Jules Verne, some just horrible, and I actually agreed not to use one of those, even though I had personally typed half of it in.
There is also great, and worthwhile, concern about the Longfellow translation of Dante. However, it is also an example that should be preserved as an indication of history, even if we recommend the Cary translation or any other as being of better quality.
I would tend to include both the authorized and unauthorized editions, even, or especially, of such books as Uncle Tom's Cabin, which became the first million-seller, perhaps ONLY because of unauthorized editions.
In most of these cases, I prefer to keep the doors open wide, perhaps with warnings, rather than to keep them either closed, or make the readers go through several doorways to find what we have.
Thanks!
Michael
PS
BTW, I forgot to mention at least one other example before, the NUSIRG manual. . .we were asked to delete the plain text version. . .at the request of the copyright holder. We considered making an issue of it, since this was the era when the major players were trying to eliminate plain text altogether, but, in the end, we decided that would hurt our future relationships with donors more than it would help in the preservation of plain text. Of course, now nearly everyone can read the file in plain text without the help of all the work we/I did in the conversion. [And this one was VERY difficult to convert, if you take a look.]
_______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d
_______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d
-- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.300 / Virus Database: 265.7.1 - Release Date: 1/19/2005
-- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.300 / Virus Database: 265.7.1 - Release Date: 1/19/2005
Michael Hart wrote:
In more recent times such suggestions have appeared online and offline among the member of "The Book People," "The eBook List," "The PDA-eBook List" and I'm sure there were even more.
You spoke of "PG volunteers". These sound to me as people external to PG.
In addition, there are often such discussions immediately before during and after the release of various items. We are currently discussing how to present the Mahabharata, which as long as the Bible and Shakespeare combined into one book. Some want to present it as a single huge file, while I, having written a paper on it in college, see a great value in presenting it both in a book by book format, as well as one huge file, for a wider range of useful searches.
I don't think presenting the Mahabharata as single file qualifies as "Orwellian Rewriting of History". I also believe, the proposed deleting of PG files should be re-classified under "Arsons of Alexandria". -- Marcello Perathoner Member of the 12 Outspoken
On Mon, 24 Jan 2005, Marcello Perathoner wrote:
Michael Hart wrote:
In more recent times such suggestions have appeared online and offline among the member of "The Book People," "The eBook List," "The PDA-eBook List" and I'm sure there were even more.
You spoke of "PG volunteers". These sound to me as people external to PG.
We have volunteers that converse about PG eBooks on other lists I am on, not to mention there are probably plenty of such conversations on lists I am not on.
In addition, there are often such discussions immediately before during and after the release of various items. We are currently discussing how to present the Mahabharata, which as long as the Bible and Shakespeare combined into one book. Some want to present it as a single huge file, while I, having written a paper on it in college, see a great value in presenting it both in a book by book format, as well as one huge file, for a wider range of useful searches.
I don't think presenting the Mahabharata as single file qualifies as "Orwellian Rewriting of History".
I don't think anyone else does, either.
I also believe, the proposed deleting of PG files should be re-classified under "Arsons of Alexandria".
Cute! I love it! However, I have an even more important use for references to modern day book burning. . .re: all those copyright extensions. . . .
-- Marcello Perathoner Member of the 12 Outspoken
Also very cute! Thanks! me
participants (6)
-
Alev Akman -
Greg Newby -
Joshua Hutchinson -
Marcello Perathoner -
Michael Dyck -
Michael Hart