========
Subject: Project Gutenberg Needs YOU!! [#2000]
From: "Michael S. Hart" <hart@prairienet.org>
To: "Michael S. Hart" <hart@pobox.com>
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1999 11:29:51 -0500 (CDT)
[This is a blatant request for support for Project Gutenberg
Please delete it and accept our apology if not interested!!]
[We only send such messages in once each April and October.]
[*Now that we can soon officially say we have "thousands" of
Etexts online, we should prepare to create an institution of
support for Project Gutenberg that will hopefully carry this
project into, and at least part of the way through, the next
millennium. . .your help could be invaluable. . .more later]
The Project Gutenberg Request for Support for April 23, 1999
Lot's of important news for those who read all the way thru.
We Have Made It Much Easier To Volunteer, see promo.net.pg!!
[There is a brand new set of web pages for our volunteers so
please help us with any suggestions and/or corrections, your
help in making this page serve our volunteers is appreciated
more than you might imagine. . .this page could become a big
foundation for our future volunteers, we are ALL volunteers]
*
Have We Given Away A Trillion Dollars Worth Of Etext Yet??!!
Yes, if we manage to get the average one of our 2,000 Etexts
to 1.67% of the world's population, using a nominal value of
$5 as the "street value" of the average one of our books, as
the population is passing 6 billion around the official date
of release of our Etext #2000.
*
Today is:
The 383rd anniversary of the death of Cervantes, author of
our 2,000th Etext, Don Quixote. . .and also the birthday &
death day of Shakespeare. They died the same day in 1616.
Shakespeare was born April 23, 1564, 435 years ago, today.
This date has also just recently become known as the World
Book Day [www.gencat.es/bookday/index.htm]. . . .
We are sending this out to you an extra day early due to any
listserver relaying delay of day or so. We hope you receive
this in a timely manner.] It also contains some updates for
our index file, including the Etexts for July, 1999. . . .
*
In addition to honoring the author of our Etext #2000. . . .
This is sent in honor of World Book Day and National Library
Library Week in the U.S., and various other means to promote
books, reading, and literacy; please take part in any way in
these efforts.
The major purpose of Project Gutenberg is to encourage great
and small efforts towards the creation and distribution of a
library of Etexts for unlimited distribution worldwide. Our
goal is to encourage the creation and distribution of 10,000
Etexts by the end of 2001.
The 2000th Project Gutenberg Etext should be posted by now!!
and we have a new site to post it on:
ftp://ftp.knowledge.com/pub/mirrors/gutenberg/
"Knowledge Matters Ltd., London, UK" .txt only
***
Contents
Overview
1.
Copyright
2.
Scanning and Typing
3.
Proofreading
4.
FTP and WWW Sites
5.
Donations
6.
Raiders of the Lost Archives
7.
Special Requests
8.
Programming
9.
New Etexts Needing Proofreading
Followed By More Detailed Information On Most Of These Subjects
***
1.
Copyright
Project Gutenberg will do copyright research for you if you send us
xeroxes of the title page [both sides, even if one side is blank.]
We need people to hunt through libraries or bookstores for editions
that we can use to legally prepare our Electronic Texts [Etexts.]
Germany, Italy and Great Britain have each extended their copyright
to "life + 70 years," as opposed to the "life +50 years" of "Berne"
copyright conventions. Residents of those areas will have to be an
extra bit careful, as a million items that used to be Public Domain
in those countries reverted to copyright status, even though a vast
majority of them are no longer for sale. This is now true for some
other countries, including France and perhaps Brazil and Portugal.
More on the United States Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 in a
"More Detailed Information" section below.
2.
Scanning and Typing
Once we have located some proper edition[s], then our volunteers do
the books by scanning or typing them into the computer. Usually it
is the same person who does the proofreading, but not necessarily.
If you have a scanner, or have access to one, or plan to get one in
the future, please contact our Director of Production, Dianne Bean,
beandp@primenet.com, with a cc: to me at hart@pobox.com
2.
Proofreading
Often the only way for many of our volunteers to work on Etexts for
us is if they can ship their book to one of you, have it scanned in
and then returned to them for proofreading.
If you could do the scanning for them, it would help us immensely.
4.
FTP and WWW Sites
We would very much like to provide better access to Etext for sites
in Africa and South America, and other locales. If you know anyone
who might be able to help with this, please read this:
We are always in search of more FTP and World Wide Web sites, so an
increasing number of people can download our books without unusual,
even often fatal, delays and glitches in transmission.
If you, or someone you know, can spare a gigabyte on their servers,
please have them contact us about creating more mirror sites. This
is a particular need for countries south of the equator, where text
files are only available on one server that we know of. If you can
help us get our books into South America, Africa, and further, this
would be a great help. We have something restarted in New Zealand,
with extensions into Australia, but the load this server can handle
is probably going to be easily exhausted.
5.
Donations
Project Gutenberg is almost completely dependent on your donations.
Most of our donations are simply mailed to:
Project Gutenberg
P. O. Box 2782
Champaign, IL 61825-2782
and are made out to "Project Gutenberg/CMU"
Carnegie Mellon University has also graciously provided those means
necessary for credit card and other means of donation. Just let us
know, and we will put you in touch with the right people there.
The Holiday Season of 1996 was the first time we ever raised enough
in a month to support Project Gutenberg for that month, but we have
received only a few donations since that time. I would like to see
Project Gutenberg become more or less an independent grassroot type
of organization, but I am not really much of a fund-raiser type, as
the fund-raiser at Carnegie Mellon University can tell you.
Anything you can do in this are would be greatly appreciated, even,
since we are at this juncture, helping us get more Public Relations
coverage of our 2,000th Etext. This should not be too difficult in
one respect, as many of the sites on the World Wide Web have never,
not once, been updated, since 1995.
Project Gutenberg sites up updated more than once a day on average,
since we are presenting 432 Etexts per year, and plan to move to at
least 500 year after #2000, which is schedule for January 1, 2000.
As I said, anything would be greatly appreciated. This SHOULD BE a
great time to get some PR. . .but it still appears, even though the
project has been written up probably about 200 times, that they are
going to write us up when THEY have a reason to rather than when WE
have a reason, and we feel it is now time to try to break out of an
entirely too limiting niche in the computer oriented media, and get
some more general publicity out there to the millions of people who
aren't computer oriented at all, but will would like to receive the
Etexts for education or entertainment. This is a majority of world
population centers, and we should do more to reach them.
If you have any "ins" in the press or with the corporate world, this
would be a good time to use them.
6.
Raiders of the Lost Archives
As you may be aware from several events of a month ago, and earlier,
there is a downside to having Etext archives in limited distribution
modalities, simply because if one site, or one person, or even whole
countries, change their minds about what they are going to archive--
then the whole world loses access to those files.
A good example was the loss of The Oxford Book of English Verse from
Project Bartleby. We have taken great pains to get this book, which
is undoubtedly important, back on the Net. If you want to see which
sites have lost this file, just do a Yahoo search for the book, then
count the vast number of sites that have blank entries for the book,
once it was deleted from a multiplicity of links; this is an example
of how important it is for Etexts to be posted on many sites, rather
than just one site will many links to it!!!
We need volunteers who will search the world for every possible book
and help us preserve it.
Project Gutenberg will not release any of this material until we can
do the copyright research and prove it belongs in the Public Domain.
We realize that many of our volunteers sometimes get frustrated that
we do this research, which possibly takes half our time, but it will
become more and more apparent why this is a good policy as copyright
laws become stiffer and stiffer, and world intellectual property can
be limited in greater and great ways. It is quite likely that it is
going to be some time in the next calendar year that a United States
law killing off another 20 years of public domain in the US will get
passed, to join the countries listed above, in eliminating a million
books from potentially being posted as Etexts, even though 99% are a
dead issue, out of print for decades. . . .
7.
Special Requests
We occasionally receive scanned material which could have benefitted from
more cleanup before it was sent to us. What we need is proofers with
patience to read through an etext and take out stray letters, clean up the
punctuation, and send a list of questionable lines to the person who
scanned it so they can send corrections to be inserted. This usually takes
a couple of weeks, and is a good short-term project for folks who want to
get their feet wet with Project Gutenberg. Dianne Bean <beandp@primenet.com>
8.
Programming
Due to the various formats in which we receive many of our Etexts,
we need some assistance in writing PERL scripts, vi scripts, or an
assortment of other scripts that will assist our proofreaders, and
our editors, in dealing with page numbers, markups, italics and an
assortment of other formatting issue that come up time to time.
Most of these are fairly trivial and can be solved with a one line
script for each of the particular situations and we just need some
people to either run the scripts we already have, or to write some
new ones from time to time when a particularly rough Etext version
arrives at our doorstep. These scripts, which take minutes to set
up, and seconds to run, can save HOURS of proofreaders' time. You
can be a BIG help just running some of these scripts for us, or in
writing or rewriting some of them on occasion.
***
More Detailed Information
1.
Copyright
Copyright Extension Is Also Happening in the United States
[This has happened since our last message of this kind] and will be
happening in most other countries unless action is taken. Lawsuits
are being made to reverse this trend, but not much chance without a
lot of public relations efforts]
Rumor has it that the United States is pushing through HR604 & S505
[House Resolution #604 and Senate Bill #505] which comprise what is
called "The Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998" which will remove
20 years of what would be Public Domain information from our future
libraries. We strongly suggest you call AND write your congressmen
to avoid removing a million books from what is already becoming the
"Information Rich Versus Information Poor" in a nations in which an
illiteracy rate is virtually equal to the literacy rate, in adults,
aged 16 and over, as per the 1994 US Literacy Report.
You can subscribe to a listserver on copyright extension at:
extension-l@olemiss.edu
or go to web sites on the subject at:
http://www.public.asu.edu/~dkarjala/
http://davinci.marc.gatech.edu/~tad/dennis/no-cense.htm
2.
Scanning and Typing
We don't really want to get into a public recommendation about what
scanners and OCR [Optical Character Recognition] programs word best
. . .it is really the case that some do better on some books, while
other do better on others.
However, we ARE willing to share our experience if you ask.
3.
Proofreading
Our official accuracy level that we try to maintain has been 99.9%,
for our first release, which is usually raised to 99.95% before the
vast majority of people ever see them, and this standard has been a
standard that has been adopted by most Etext providers, including a
new effort toward Etext by the Library of Congress and the national
libraries of Great Britain and other countries.
What we hope you realize is that any serious effort to get an Etext
to 100% accuracy should take MORE effort than to create an entirely
new Etext with an accuracy level of 99.9% to 99.95%.
While many, even most, of the Project Gutenberg Etexts are accurate
to an amazing degree, even more amazing when you compare then to an
entire world of Etexts prepared by both the scholarly or commercial
Etext enterprises, we do not feel that the additional doubling of a
more than massive effort, to possibly reduce the errors, by another
.02% perhaps, would have anywhere near the value of the preparation
of an entirely new Etext with the same amount of effort.
Nevertheless, even the most famous universities of the world have a
collection of Etexts, many of which have vastly more errors that in
our collection. This is also true of the commercial Etexts. Don't
be afraid that your efforts won't be as good as all the others, the
process of improving Project Gutenberg Etexts is never ending.
In addition, there are many volunteers who would prefer to have an
Etext or at least an author selected for them to work on. As some
of you already know, _I_ have been reluctant to choose for anyone,
not wanting to bias the formation of our collection with my choice
of what are the great books of human history.
I have promised to do several things once we reached Etext #2,000,
one of which is to provide more guidance to those who seek it, and
that guidance will be coming from Dianne Bean, true librarian, who
is also working on the cataloguing project I also promised will be
forthcoming once we reach Etext #2,000.
More on:
Proofreading: We could also use people who know how to use DIFF or
similar programs that point out differences between two files, even
programmers that might only be able to search our files for matched
and unmatched quotes. [Remember that when quoting many paragraphs,
each internal paragraph gets only an opening quote.]
Our proofreading is a never-ending story. . .we run spell-checkers,
and other varieties of programs, on our Etexts, and have real human
proofreaders go over them in pretty incredible detail, but we would
be remiss if we did not tell you that over 99% of the books we work
from have their own errors, and that while we catch some of those--
we undoubtedly introduce errors of our own, and even though we will
gladly keep updating our editions, ad infinitum, the odds that this
will catch ALL the errors in the near future are virtually 0%.
Therefore. . .we need you to email us when you have suggestion, and
comments, and when you find possible errors that need correction.
4.
FTP and WWW Sites
We are willing to adjust the bandwidth on various sites by adjusting
the publicity various sites receive, and also by asking our users to
only use certain sites at certain times of the day or night. So the
drain on sites volunteering to mirror Etexts should not suffer any.
5.
Donations
We have never received any local, regional or national grants; your
donations, and the support of Carnegie Mellon University and people
I would hope to count as my friends are the backbone of our support
and we could hardly survive otherwise.
6.
Raiders of the Lost Archives
This is going to be particularly evident if the raggedy performances
that are destroying 99% of the Public Domain continue by raiding the
Public Domain, taking a million works out of the Public Domain, over
a period of 20 years, and putting perhaps 1% of 1% of them back in a
print version so that those who owned the copyrights for the past 75
years and made millions from them, can make another million per year
while 99.99% of those works disappear from public access altogether.
*
And now here are the listings of our most recent Etexts, and July:
Dec 1999 Don Quijote, by Cervantes in Spanish .txt & .htm [2donqxxx.xxx]2000
Dec 1999 Chrome Yellow, by Aldous Huxley [Aldous Huxley #1][crmylxxx.xxx]1999
Dec 1999 Thus Spake Zarathustra, by Friedrich Nietzsche #1 [spzarxxx.xxx]1998
Dec 1999 Paradise, Divine Comedy, Dante, Tr. by Norton [3ddcnxxx.xxx]1997
Dec 1999 Purgatory, Divine Comedy, Dante, Tr. by Norton [2ddcnxxx.xxx]1996
Dec 1999 Hell/Inferno, Divine Comedy, Dante, Tr. by Norton [1ddcnxxx.xxx]1995
Dec 1999 Adventures among Books, by Andrew Lang [Lang #19][advbkxxx.xxx]1994
Dec 1999 Told After Supper, by Jerome K. Jerome [JKJ #15] [tldspxxx.xxx]1993
Dec 1999 Fragmenta Regalia, by Robert Nauton [Published] [trvfgxxx.xxx]1992
Dec 1999 Travels in England, by Paul Hentzner [as 1 Book] [trvfgxxx.xxx]1992
Dec 1999 Old Friends, Epistolary Parody, by Andrew Lang[18][oldfnxxx.xxx]1991
Dec 1999 The Bedford-Row Conspiracy, by Thackeray [WMT #11][bdfrcxxx.xxx]1990
Dec 1999 The Foolish Dictionary, by Gideon Wurdz [fldctxxx.xxx]1989
Dec 1999 History of Tom Thumb, etc. Edited by Henry Altemus[thumbxxx.xxx]1988
Includes: The Stories of the Cat and the Mouse [and] Fire! Fire! Burn Stick!
Dec 1999 The Outlet, by Andy Adams [outltxxx.xxx]1987
Dec 1999 Life and Death of Mr. Badman, by John Bunyan[JB#3][badmnxxx.xxx]1986
Dec 1999 Men's Wives, by William Makepeace Thackeray[WMT10][mnwvsxxx.xxx]1985
Dec 1999 [Reserved: George Orwell's 1984/Did it come true?][o1984xxx.xxx]1984*
Dec 1999 Monsieur Beaucaire, by Booth Tarkington [BT #8] [mbeauxxx.xxx]1983
and
Dec 1999 Origin of Species, 6th Ed., by Charles Darwin [#5][otoos610.xxx]2009
[Not Completed Interim Numbers 2004 to 2008, at this time]
Dec 1999 Spirits in Bondage [Lyrics Cycle], by C. S. Lewis [spbndxxx.xxx]2003
Dec 1999 Spirits in Bondage [Lyrics Cycle], Clive Hamilton [spbndxxx.xxx]2003
Dec 1999 Sonnets from the Portuguese, by E. B. Browning[#1][snprgxxx.xxx]2002
Dec 1999 [Reserved for 2001, by Arthur C. Clarke] [ xxx.xxx]2001
And please don't forget our last two Etexts from last month, take a look. . .
Nov 1999 Rashomon, by Akutagawa Ryunosuke [in Japanese] [rshmnxxx.xxx]1982
Nov 1999 The Right to Read, by Richard M. Stallman [of GNU][tychoxxx.xxx]1981C
This Etext is available as tycho10.txt or .zip and tycho10h.htm or .zip files
and in French HTML as tycho10f.htm and tycho10f.zip
*
Many people have reported they never received the listings for July,
1999, so we are including them here:
The first 5 Etexts are from:
JOE MULLER: DETECTIVE by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner
Being the Account of Some Adventures in the Professional
Experience of a Member of the Imperial Austrian Police
by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner
Each title actually starts with the phrase "The Case of The"
but we didn't have room to put that in the index each time.
Jul 1999 A New Voyage to Carolina, by John Lawson [nvycrxxx.xxx]1838
Jul 1999 The Prince and the Pauper, by Mark Twain[Twain#14][prpprxxx.xxx]1837
Jul 1999 The Case of the Golden Bullet, by Colbrun & Groner[cotgbxxx.xxx]1836
Jul 1999 Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study/Colbrun/Groner[pbipsxxx.xxx]1835
Jul 1999 The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow, Colbrun&Groner[pdfisxxx.xxx]1834
Jul 1999 The Registered Letter by G.I. Colbron and A.Groner[rgstlxxx.xxx]1833
Jul 1999 The Lamp That Went Out, by Colbrun and Groner [tltwoxxx.xxx]1832
Jul 1999 The Lock and Key Library, Julian Hawthorne, Ed. [lckylxxx.xxx[1831
The Following 12 Etexts Are From:
The Lock and Key Library
Classic Mystery and Detective Stories - Old Time English
Edited by Julian Hawthorne
Jul 1999 The Haunted House, by Charles Dickens [lckylxxx.xxx[1831
Jul 1999 No. I Branch Line: The Signal Man, by Dickens [lckylxxx.xxx[1831
Jul 1999 The Haunted and the Haunters, by E G Bulwer-Lytton[lckylxxx.xxx[1831
Jul 1999 The House and the Brain, by Edward G Bulwer-Lytton[lckylxxx.xxx[1831
Jul 1999 The Incantation, by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton [lckylxxx.xxx[1831
Jul 1999 The Avenger, Thomas de Quincey [lckylxxx.xxx[1831
Jul 1999 Melmoth the Wanderer, by Charles Rober Maturin [lckylxxx.xxx[1831
Jul 1999 A Mystery with a Moral, Laurence Sterne [lckylxxx.xxx[1831
Jul 1999 On Being Found Out, by William Makepeace Thackeray[lckylxxx.xxx[1831
Jul 1999 The Notch on the Ax by William Makepeace Thackeray[lckylxxx.xxx[1831
Jul 1999 Bourgonef, by Anonymous [lckylxxx.xxx[1831
Jul 1999 The Closed Cabinet, by Anonymous [lckylxxx.xxx[1831
Jul 1999 Wyndham Towers, by Thomas B. Aldrich [Aldrich #5][wndhmxxx.xxx]1830
Jul 1999 Mae Madden, by Mary Murdoch Mason [mmmmmxxx.xxx]1829
Jul 1999 Chronicles of the Canongate, by Walter Scott [#9][cnngtxxx.xxx]1828
Jul 1999 Life of Charlotte Bronte, V1, by E. C. Gaskell[#3][1locbxxx.xxx]1827
Jul 1999 Sarrasine, by Honore de Balzac [de Balzac #71][srrsnxxx.xxx]1826
Jul 1999 Adventures of Reddy Fox by Thornton W. Burgess[#1][rdyfxxxx.xxx]1825
Jul 1999 Peace Manoeuvres, by Richard Harding Davis[RHD#28][pcmnvxxx.xxx]1824
Jul 1999 The Make-Believe Man, by Richard Harding Davis #27[mbmanxxx.xxx]1823
Jul 1999 The Amateur, by Richard Harding Davis [Davis #26][thmtrxxx.xxx]1822
Jul 1999 A Charmed Life, by Richard Harding Davis [RHD #25][chmlfxxx.xxx]1821
Jul 1999 A Wasted Day, by Richard Harding Davis [Davis #24][wstdyxxx.xxx]1820
Jul 1999 The Messengers, by Richard Harding Davis[Davis#23][msgrsxxx.xxx]1819
Jul 1999 The Spy, by Richard Harding Davis[R. H. Davis #22][thspyxxx.xxx]1818
Jul 1999 A Question of Latitude, by Richard H.Davis[RHD#21][qlttdxxx.xxx]1817
Jul 1999 Tattine, by Ruth Ogden [Mrs. Charles W. Ide] [tttnexxx.xxx]1816
Jul 1999 The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln by Helen Nicolay[bloalxxx.xxx]1815
Jul 1999 The Agony Column, by Earl Derr Biggers [gnyclxxx.xxx]1814
Jul 1999 A Man of Business, by Honore de Balzac[Balzac #70][mnbusxxx.xxx]1813
Jul 1999 A Prince of Bohemia, by Honore de Balzac [HdB #69][prbhmxxx.xxx]1812
Jul 1999 Massimilla Doni, by Honore de Balzac[de Balzac#68][msmdnxxx.xxx]1811
Jul 1999 A Second Home, by Honore de Balzac [de Balzac #67][2ndhmxxx.xxx]1810
Jul 1999 Bucky O'Connor, by William MacLeod Raine[Raine #2][bkcnrxxx.xxx]1809
Jul 1999 The Log of the Jolly Polly, by R H Davis[Davis#20][jlplyxxx.xxx]1808
Jul 1999 The Lost House, by Richard Harding Davis[Davis#19][lsthsxxx.xxx]1807
Jul 1999 The Frame Up, by Richard Harding Davis [Davis #18][frmupxxx.xxx]1806
Jul 1999 The Gentle Grafter, by O. Henry [O Henry #6][grftrxxx.xxx]1805
Jul 1999 War and the Future, by H. G. Wells[H.G. Wells #18][wrftrxxx.xxx]1804
Jul 1999 Wyoming, Story of Outdoor West, by William M Raine[wymngxxx.xxx]1803
Jul 1999 King Henry VIII, by Shakespeare [1ws4211x.xxx]1802
Jul 1999 The Tempest, by Shakespeare [1ws4111x.xxx]1801
and
Sep 1999 La Tulipe Noire, by Alexandre Dumas[Pere#6/French][tlpnrxxx.xxx]1910
This is an abridged edition in French; also see our full length English Etext
Jul 1997 The Black Tulip, by Alexandre Dumas[Pere][Dumas#1][tbtlpxxx.xxx] 965
*
Hopefully it has been worth your while to read this far. . .and you will take
a moment to consider making a tax-deductible donation to Project Gutenberg as
we are, as once before, without any financial income, including myself. . .mh
Project Gutenberg donations are tax deductible to the full extents
of the law, and are handled by Carnegie Mellon University. If you
need a letter verifying your contribution, please mention that.
Checks should be made out to "Project Gutenberg/CMU" and mailed to:
Project Gutenberg
P.O. Box 2782
Champaign, IL
61825-2782
Thank you so much!!
Michael
=============================================
Michael S. Hart, Professor of Electronic Text
Executive Director of Project Gutenberg Etext
Benedictine University, Lisle, IL 60532-0900
No official connection to U of Illinois--UIUC
Permanent Internet Address!!! hart@pobox.com
Internet User Number 100 [approximately] [TM]
One of the several "Ask Dr Internet" Sponsors
Break Down the Bars of Ignorance & Illiteracy
On the Carnegie Libraries' 100th Anniversary!
If I don't answer in two days, please resend.
It usually means I did not get/see your note.
other_1999_04_22_project_gutenberg_needs_you.txt
If you liked this post, say thanks by sharing it.