Re: PG-Canada / List of tasks to do
I'd suggest that getting content and finding Public domain books is not something we need to worry about. Having enough interested volunteers to help produce them will probably be more of a challenge. I'll compare here with Project Gutenberg. Right now a bottle-neck is in having people to post-process the texts coming out of DP. There are plenty of people ready who could produce page scans of eligible books faster than they could be processed. As we will be dealing probably largely with post-1922 books I don't think it will be too hard to find books that are eligible for PG Canada. I admire the philosophy of letting volunteers do what they are interested in, or even just happen to find copies of. However, it couldn't hurt to have a list of requested books. Also, if it helps, I've got a large list of Canadian authors (or at least from Canadian referance sources) courtesy of Philip at the New General Catalog of Old Books & Authors http://www.kingkong.demon.co.uk/ngcoba/ngcoba.htm In the past, I have contributed a few dozen author names, missing dates, etc. for his lists, and I'd suggest he would be a worthwhile ally to have, particularly in the matter of sharing author birth and death dates. Andrew On Thu, 27 Jan 2005, Wallace J.McLean wrote:
I'd also suggest a list of notable books and their location might be a good idea. I know a few people who have a number of books that are not likely in the system yet, but really should be. If we could identify what cooperative people, have what books, then we might be able to get a higher quality content sooner by prioritizing this list.
It's both easy and hard to get a list of eligible dead guys. Easy; just use a pre-1955 year as an author name keyword in a library catalogue. (You'll also get lots of authors born in 1954, unless you restrict your search to imprints <1955 as well.) Hard; you get lots and lots of hits.
What I've been promoting among some of the content-providing cabal is this:
Let's concentrate on post-1922 imprints. DP-USA/PG-USA can do anything published before this date; let them (and the us that are a part of them) deal with those works there. Let's specialize in materials that won't be available on the US site for many years to come.
And let's concentrate on works by authors who died more than 50 but less than 71 years ago. This is, realistically, the body of work most at risk of being lost to copyright extension in Canada. If we can get a gazillion such works re-used as public domain works, it makes it politically very difficult for the Guvmint to extend the life+term, at least not retroactively.
So: on the content side, our major content providers should focus (not exclusively, but consciously focus) on post-1923 works by authors who died from 1934 to 1954. Next year we move the death dates up a year, and so on, and so on.
Andrew Sly wrote:
I'd suggest that getting content and finding Public domain books is not something we need to worry about. Having enough interested volunteers to help produce them will probably be more of a challenge.
What interests me is to split up the project into three areas/groups, each of which can have its own volunteer base, its own group leaders, and a level of autonomy with the other groups. The three are: 1) Scanning 2) Cataloging and Copyright Clearance 3) Conversion to structured digital text The first, scanning, can be done independently. It would seek out old texts to scan which, if public domain, can be placed online. Ask for donations (with a tax deduction to the donor) of old books which are otherwise falling apart, chop them, then run them through a sheet feed scanner. The chopped books would then be put into ziploc bags with a dessicant (or whatever other method is recommended) and archived away in case there's interest in rescanning. I think it even possible to ask Brewster Kahle at the Internet Archive for a donation of sheet feed scanners in return for donating copies of the scans to IA. These scanners, even rugged professional level models, are not overly expensive (not like the orbital or robotic scanners, for example.) (In other messages, I referred to the scanning project as Distributed Scanners.) The second, cataloging/copyright clearance, will take the scans which have been done, and put together MARC (or equivalent) records for the works (a lot of data can be taken from other libraries.) In addition, the group can do the research on the copyright of the works, which of course the cataloging information is important in the process. And finally, this group can look over the scans to determine if any pages are missing or badly scanned (a sort of QC function). It may be possible to find trained librarian volunteers to help out in this group. Since there exists *excellent* commercial software for cataloging, again the Internet Archive may be willing to buy licenses for that software for the group to use in return for help in cataloging IA's scanning project in Toronto. Alev Akman is the expert in the area of cataloging who should be further consulted for this project (she is a head librarian at CSU Fresno, and has an MLIS degree.) She highly recommends using commercial software for generating the cataloging records in MARC or MARC-XML -- she also recommends the project develop an authority database for the various fields, such as author names. And the third area I don't need to discuss since that is the area of focus at this time. Interestingly, I would expect the scanning group to greatly outpace the group producing structured digital texts, at least early on. This doesn't matter, really. I think from a political standpoint (particularly with regards to influencing the Canadian government with regards to proper copyright policy), it is wise for the scanning group to go hog wild and get as many scanned books online as possible -- get a half dozen sheet feed scanners and keep them running 24-7! This will catch the attention of a lot of people, including the Internet Archive, and lead to good things, such as closer association with the Canadian government and various archives, great PR, and other benefits (possibly even major long-term funding.) Jon Noring
Right now it might be important to harvest as much from PG of OZ as possible before it all disappears. Some like Gone with the Wind are already gone, or only partially there via internet archive as the list owner apparently requested their deletion. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Sly" <sly@victoria.tc.ca> To: <PGCanada@lists.pglaf.org> Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2005 6:49 PM Subject: [PGCanada] Re: PG-Canada / List of tasks to do
I'd suggest that getting content and finding Public domain books is not something we need to worry about. Having enough interested volunteers to help produce them will probably be more of a challenge.
I'll compare here with Project Gutenberg. Right now a bottle-neck is in having people to post-process the texts coming out of DP. There are plenty of people ready who could produce page scans of eligible books faster than they could be processed.
As we will be dealing probably largely with post-1922 books I don't think it will be too hard to find books that are eligible for PG Canada.
I admire the philosophy of letting volunteers do what they are interested in, or even just happen to find copies of. However, it couldn't hurt to have a list of requested books.
Also, if it helps, I've got a large list of Canadian authors (or at least from Canadian referance sources) courtesy of Philip at the New General Catalog of Old Books & Authors http://www.kingkong.demon.co.uk/ngcoba/ngcoba.htm
In the past, I have contributed a few dozen author names, missing dates, etc. for his lists, and I'd suggest he would be a worthwhile ally to have, particularly in the matter of sharing author birth and death dates.
Andrew
On Thu, 27 Jan 2005, Wallace J.McLean wrote:
I'd also suggest a list of notable books and their location might be a good idea. I know a few people who have a number of books that are not likely in the system yet, but really should be. If we could identify what cooperative people, have what books, then we might be able to get a higher quality content sooner by prioritizing this list.
It's both easy and hard to get a list of eligible dead guys. Easy; just use a pre-1955 year as an author name keyword in a library catalogue. (You'll also get lots of authors born in 1954, unless you restrict your search to imprints <1955 as well.) Hard; you get lots and lots of hits.
What I've been promoting among some of the content-providing cabal is this:
Let's concentrate on post-1922 imprints. DP-USA/PG-USA can do anything published before this date; let them (and the us that are a part of them) deal with those works there. Let's specialize in materials that won't be available on the US site for many years to come.
And let's concentrate on works by authors who died more than 50 but less than 71 years ago. This is, realistically, the body of work most at risk of being lost to copyright extension in Canada. If we can get a gazillion such works re-used as public domain works, it makes it politically very difficult for the Guvmint to extend the life+term, at least not retroactively.
So: on the content side, our major content providers should focus (not exclusively, but consciously focus) on post-1923 works by authors who died from 1934 to 1954. Next year we move the death dates up a year, and so on, and so on.
_______________________________________________ Project Gutenberg of Canada Website: http://www.projectgutenberg.ca/ List: pgcanada@lists.pglaf.org Archives: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/pgcanada/
Hi Norm. Yes, adding books from PG of OZ is a good idea. (Although as I've said before, there is no lack of ideas about what could be added. It will be, as usual, a matter of what volunteers actually do that will be the deciding factor.) And just to try and correct any misinformation here... I don't have the impression that PG of OZ is likely to disappear any time soon. Gone with the Wind is there in the collection (it was not absent for too long), and I am not aware of any other titles in the PG of OZ collection which anyone has even suggested removing. I must admit I know very little about the Australian copyright law "reform" that came into place on January 1st, but I do have the impression that it is not retroactive, so there are no legal problems with anything which had already been added. Andrew On Fri, 28 Jan 2005, N Wolcott wrote:
Right now it might be important to harvest as much from PG of OZ as possible before it all disappears. Some like Gone with the Wind are already gone, or only partially there via internet archive as the list owner apparently requested their deletion.
participants (3)
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Andrew Sly -
Jon Noring -
N Wolcott