Question about Scanned Books
Archive.org has many DJVU files of books that have lapsed into the public domain. Would it comply with PG's guidelines to take one of these volumes (the one I was thinking of has a copyright date of 1915 and can be found at http://www.archive.org/details/worksmartinluth00spaegoog)? The important elements here are: 1) I do not have a copy of the paper edition 2) This is a scan of a work that, by all appearances, qualifies having been published in the US before 1923 3) Was digitized by Google Would this work or would its ancestry cause problems? -- Michael McDermott www.mad-computer-scientist.com
Michael, as long as the book can be proven to have been published before 1923, it's in the public domain in the U.S., and is eligible for addition to the Project Gutenberg collection. (For the past few years, Archive.org and Google Books have been the source for most PG submissions, as produced by Distributed Proofreaders and other submitters.) A paper copy is not necessary. For most books in Internet Archive, there's an "All Files: HTTP" link in the "View the book" box, at the left. That gives access to all formats in which the book is available--GIF, PDF, TIF, etc. Before beginning work on any book, you should check that it's not already in Project Gutenberg, and not being worked on by someone else by checking David Price's In-progress list at http://www.dprice48.freeserve.co.uk/GutIP.html. If you haven't prepared an ebook for submission to PG, you should read its various FAQ's at http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Category:FAQ. Section 7 of the Volunteers' FAQ is especially important. Al Haines Project Gutenberg ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael McDermott" <mmcdermott@mad-computer-scientist.com> To: "gutvol-d" <gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org> Sent: Monday, February 15, 2010 12:38 PM Subject: [gutvol-d] Question about Scanned Books
Archive.org has many DJVU files of books that have lapsed into the public domain. Would it comply with PG's guidelines to take one of these volumes (the one I was thinking of has a copyright date of 1915 and can be found at http://www.archive.org/details/worksmartinluth00spaegoog)?
The important elements here are:
1) I do not have a copy of the paper edition 2) This is a scan of a work that, by all appearances, qualifies having been published in the US before 1923 3) Was digitized by Google
Would this work or would its ancestry cause problems? -- Michael McDermott www.mad-computer-scientist.com _______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d
This part of Al's advice should indeed be taken seriously for those contemplating a solo project. I have twice been caught out having worked on a project for which I have had a valid prior clearance only to find that someone has done a duplicate project. I am deeply grateful to David for the work he does on the in-progress list, but I find it difficult to use and in any event one depends on others using it effectively too, and you rely on them to make some effort to follow up with the prior clearance holder as well. My experience is that this is not a reliable string of assumptions. I have been advocating off and on for a more accurate and up to date in-progress mechanism that would be driven from the core information that forms the PG clearance database. The process I apply when deciding to do a project is: (1) Search for the work online in the "usual" places: - king kong http://www.kingkong.demon.co.uk/ngcoba/ngcoba.htm - online books page http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/new.html - PG's catalogue Search using the author and title. Find the author and title on a large catalogue like the LOC or AMICUS and also search for variant names and such. (2) Go to the PG-DP, DP-Europe and DP-Canada sites and search the forums for any talk about my proposed project. (3) Look in David's list. (4) Obtain a PG clearance. If a book I am working on is something that might be relevant to PG Canada, I *also* obtain a clearance from them. In the case of parallel clearances I inform both parties that this is going on. (5) Look *again* in David's list to see that my project appears. (6) Start work on my project. This may seem somewhat paranoid, but I don't intend *again* to be caught-out this way. On 14-Apr-2010 12:26, Al Haines (shaw) wrote:
Before beginning work on any book, you should check that it's not already in Project Gutenberg, and not being worked on by someone else by checking David Price's In-progress list at http://www.dprice48.freeserve.co.uk/GutIP.html.
============================================================ Gardner Buchanan <gbuchana@teksavvy.com> Ottawa, ON FreeBSD: Where you want to go. Today.
participants (3)
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Al Haines (shaw) -
Gardner Buchanan -
Michael McDermott