Through my contacts with people as part of the CD and DVD distribution effort, I had a recent contact with a person who was confused by something that she found on the shelves of our library. She found a book that she was interested in reading, but she could not figure out how to download it. After some back and forth, I found that she had apparently used one of the full text search engines which found a citation of an interesting book within one of the copyright renewals files. Of course, because the copyright has been renewed, this particular book will not be available on PG for quite a while. This may be an isolated instance. However, would it make sense to prevent the full text search engines from indexing the copyright renewal files? Would it make sense to add some text to the PG index page to indicate that the copyright renewal files list books that are NOT in PG, rather than books that are? Thank you. John Hagerson
On 8/25/05, John Hagerson <j.hagerson@comcast.net> wrote:
She found a book that she was interested in reading, but she could not figure out how to download it. After some back and forth, I found that she had apparently used one of the full text search engines which found a citation of an interesting book within one of the copyright renewals files.
I don't see how this is limited to the renewals. We have a bibliography of Talbot's works in PG, despite some of them not going into the public domain for a while. I don't see that this type of error will be common enough to take drastic measures against.
I don't think so. Most people will understand that if you look in a book titled Copyright Renewals, it will have something to do with copyrights that have been renewed. Just like *most* people know that even though you *can* put a coffee mug on that handy tray that pops out of the front of your computer, that isn't what it is *meant* for. ;) Josh John Hagerson wrote:
Through my contacts with people as part of the CD and DVD distribution effort, I had a recent contact with a person who was confused by something that she found on the shelves of our library.
She found a book that she was interested in reading, but she could not figure out how to download it. After some back and forth, I found that she had apparently used one of the full text search engines which found a citation of an interesting book within one of the copyright renewals files.
Of course, because the copyright has been renewed, this particular book will not be available on PG for quite a while.
This may be an isolated instance. However, would it make sense to prevent the full text search engines from indexing the copyright renewal files? Would it make sense to add some text to the PG index page to indicate that the copyright renewal files list books that are NOT in PG, rather than books that are?
Thank you. John Hagerson
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On Thu, Aug 25, 2005 at 09:33:24PM -0500, John Hagerson wrote:
Through my contacts with people as part of the CD and DVD distribution effort, I had a recent contact with a person who was confused by something that she found on the shelves of our library.
She found a book that she was interested in reading, but she could not figure out how to download it. After some back and forth, I found that she had apparently used one of the full text search engines which found a citation of an interesting book within one of the copyright renewals files.
Hi, John. This describes an FAQ we get to help@pglaf.org at least once or twice per week. Yes, it might make sense to set our robots.txt file to eliminate these files from search engine indexing. I'm cc'ing Marcello, so he can tell us whether this seems worthwhile given our system stats and such. - Greg
Of course, because the copyright has been renewed, this particular book will not be available on PG for quite a while.
This may be an isolated instance. However, would it make sense to prevent the full text search engines from indexing the copyright renewal files? Would it make sense to add some text to the PG index page to indicate that the copyright renewal files list books that are NOT in PG, rather than books that are?
Thank you. John Hagerson
_______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d
John Hagerson wrote:
She found a book that she was interested in reading, but she could not figure out how to download it. After some back and forth, I found that she had apparently used one of the full text search engines which found a citation of an interesting book within one of the copyright renewals files.
This may be an isolated instance. However, would it make sense to prevent the full text search engines from indexing the copyright renewal files?
That would make the copyright renewal files unusable for those who wanted to search them. Besides, that is another thing that would have to be maintained by hand ... better write it off as pilot error (and remember the story for the next time you need a good one.)
Would it make sense to add some text to the PG index page to indicate that the copyright renewal files list books that are NOT in PG, rather than books that are?
The note would be displayed on this page: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/11800 but, if she got to that page, I dont see how she could possibly have mistaken the book for something else even without note. I guess she just looked at the file in the google cache and read the PG header. -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster@gutenberg.org
participants (5)
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David Starner -
Greg Newby -
John Hagerson -
Joshua Hutchinson -
Marcello Perathoner