The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter 7th May 2003
eBooks Readable By Both Humans and Computers For Since 1971
Part 2
We have now completed 7852 ebooks!!!
In this part of the Project Gutenberg Weekly newsletter:
1) Editorial
2) News
3) Notes and Queries
4) Mailing list information
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Project Gutenberg is available at http://www.promo.net
Webmaster is Pietro di Miceli of Rome, Italy
Check out our Websites at promo.net/pg & gutenberg.net, and see below
to learn how you can get INSTANT access to our eBooks via FTP servers
even before the new eBooks listed below appear in our catalogue. The
eBooks are posted throughout the week. You can even get daily lists.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
1) Editorial
Hello,
Following last weeks article on Radio Gutenberg, this week we are
running an article to explain all about it and how you can get hold of
it. Big thanks to Mike Eschman for the information and we wish him
good luck with the project. Below you will find details of current
scheduling on RG and we will be keeping you up to date on developments.
Happy reading,
Alice
(newsletter at schiffwood dot co dot uk - If you hit reply, the mail you
send does not reach me and disappears into the ether.)
We welcome feedback, critisism (of any kind), ebook reviews, featured
author suggestions, writings and awkward questions at the address above. Please feel free to send our general ramblings to a friend.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
============= [ SUBMIT A NEW EBOOK FOR COPYRIGHT CLEARANCE ]==============
If you have a book you would like to confirm is in the public domain in
the US, and therefore suitable for Project Gutenberg, please do the
following:
1. Check whether we have the eBook already. Look in
http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg/GUTINDEX.ALL
which is updated weekly. (The searchable catalog at
http://www.gutenberg.net lags behind by several months)
2. Check the "in progress" list to see whether someone is already
working on the eBook. Sometimes, books are listed as in progress for
years - if so, email David Price (his address is on the list) to ask
for contact information for the person working on the book. The "in
progress" list:
http://www.dprice48.freeserve.co.uk/GutIP.html
3. If the book seems to be a good candidate (pre-1923 publication
date, or 1923-1988 published in the US without a copyright notice),
submit scans of the title page and verso page (even if the verso is
blank) to:
http://beryl.ils.unc.edu/copy.html
You'll hear back within a few days.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
2) News
May 2003 Broadcast of Gutenberg Radio.
www.etc-edu.com/
Featured :
Stereo: The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne.
[The conclusion of Nemo's tale, Captain of the submarine Nautilus.]
Mono : The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
For Download :
[all downloads are in stereo, .mp3, zipped, one file per chapter.]
Franz Kafka Metamorphosis.
Jules Verne 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
Jules Verne The Mysterious Island.
H. G. Wells The Time Machine.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The Hound of the Baskervilles.
Bram Stoker Dracula.
All Gutenberg Radio broadcasts become part of the official Gutenberg
archives after review, possible editing and approval. This usually
takes 6 to 8 weeks. And books are frequently reissued to leverage advances in
audio technology.
So don't despair if you miss a broadcast! Soon it will be available at
http://www.promo.net/pg/ for download. You are free to start a broadcast of
your own, as long as you abide by the Gutenberg copyrights
and procedures. Basically, broadcast but DON'T SELL.
If you want to mark up a book for broadcast, watch these announcements.
We will be publishing a manual to help you do so in these pages. At the moment,
we would like novels and short stories in English more than anything
else. But Spanish is in our immediate future, as are biographies and histories,
thought these will be introduced somewhat later.
The Legend of the Hound of the Baskervilles.
In the time of the Great Rebellion, the Manor of Baskerville was held by Hugo.
There was in him, a wanton, cruel humour. He came to love the daughter
of a yeoman, who held lands near the Baskerville estate. But the young
maiden would avoid him. So Hugo, with five or six companions, stole
down on the farm and carried off the maiden. By the aid of the growth
of ivy which covered the south wall of the manor, she escaped. Hugo
cried that he would render his body and soul to the Powers of Evil, if
he might overtake her.
Hugo's companions followed him over the moor, it opened into a broad space,
in which stood two of those great stones, which were set by forgotten
peoples, in the days of old. The moon was shining bright upon the
clearing, and there in the center lay the maid where she had fallen
dead. Standing over Hugo, plucking at his throat, stood a great,
black beast, shaped like a hound, larger than any hound that mortal
eye has seen. The thing tore the throat out of Hugo Baskerville.
Some thoughts on the Gutenberg Edition of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
Born in the French river town of Nantes, Jules Verne (1828-1905) had a passion
for the sea. The stimulus for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was an 1865
fan letter from a fellow writer, Madame George Sand. Initially,
Verne's narrative was influenced by the 1863 uprising of Poland
against Russia. But in the 1860s, France had to treat Russia as an ally.
Shark attacks, giant squid, cannibals, hurricanes, whale hunts, and
other rip-roaring adventures erupt at random, giving the novel an air
of documentary realism. Verne adds backbone to the action by
developing three recurring motifs, Nemo's past life and future
intentions, the mounting tension between Nemo and harpooner Ned Land,
and Ned's ongoing schemes to escape from the Nautilus.
Verne regards the sea from many angles, in the domain of marine
biology, he gives us thumbnail sketches of fish, seashells, coral,
sometimes in great catalogs that swirl past like musical cascades;
in the realm of geology, he studies volcanoes literally inside and
out; in the world of commerce, he celebrates the high-energy
entrepreneurs who lay the Atlantic Cable or dig the Suez Canal. And
Verne's marine engineering proves authoritative. His specifications
for an open-sea submarine and a self-contained diving suit were
decades before their time.
Much of the novel's brooding power comes from captain Nemo. Inventor,
musician, Renaissance genius, he's the prototype not only for
countless renegade scientists in popular fiction, even for Sherlock Holmes!
Dr. Robert D. Ballard, finder of the Titanic, confesses that this was
his favorite book as a teenager, and Cousteau, most renowned of marine
explorers, called it his shipboard bible.
This Gutenberg translation is a faithful rendering of the original
French texts published in Paris by J. Hetzel et Cie. Although prior
English versions have often been heavily abridged, this new
translation is complete, to the smallest substantive detail.
F. P. WALTER.
University of Houston.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
QUICK WAYS TO MAKE A DONATION TO PROJECT GUTENBERG
A. Send a check or money order to:
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
PMB 113
1739 University Ave.
Oxford, MS 38655-4109
B. Donate by credit card online
NetworkForGood:
http://www.guidestar.org/partners/networkforgood/donate.jsp?ein=64-6221541
or
PayPal to "donate@gutenberg.net":
https://www.paypal.com
/xclick/business=donate%40gutenberg.net&item_name=Donate+to+Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg's success is due to the hard work of thousands of
volunteers over more than 30 years. Your donations make it possible
to support these volunteers, and pay our few employees to continue the
creation of free electronic texts. We accept credit cards, checks and
money transfers from any country, in any currency.
Donations are made to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
(PGLAF). PGLAF is approved as a charitable 501(c)(3) organization by
the US Internal Revenue Service, and has the Federal Employer Identification
Number (EIN) 64-6221541.
For more information, including several other ways to donate, go to
http://promo.net/pg/donation.html or email gbnewby@ils.unc.edu
----------------------------------------------------------------------
3) Notes and Queries
Radio Gutenberg
1. How did the idea for Gutenberg Radio come about? When did it begin?
Has anyone done this before with Project Gutenberg?
To my knowledge, no one has done this before for Project Gutenberg.
We started in April-May of 2002 (about) making audio books for Project
Gutenberg. We are also heavily invoved with the music community in New
Orleans and have been doing live broadcasts from clubs, and on one occasion, our offices.
The audio books can be quite long, and we wanted people to have an opportunity
to hear Gutenberg books without the committment of a download. Looking to
the future, we also want to perfect the technology required to produce
live plays made from Gutenberg materials at universities and high schools
worldwide. We have actually produced one live radio play of a Jack London
story from South Sea Tales, 'The House of Mapuhi', but these are quite expensive, and we will need collaborators to do more.
As the Gutenberg materials can be used freely, and because the broadcast technology we use is open source and runs on linux, students can get hands on practice in creating plays from the plots of classics such as Dracula and The Great Gadsby
in sufficient quantity to launch careers.
Students in high school can get hands on in writing by re-casting third
person verbage to first person, to stage directions or both - which is
much more effective than the usual drills and rote - in having students
develop and retain real skills.
2. How does it work?
- the text is evaluated, and edited if necessary, by a gutenberger.
- a set of scripts 'automagically' mark up the Gutenberg text.
- the markup text is converted to audio.
- the audio is mixed down and 'balanced', introducing acoustical and other performance enhancing studio techniques
This produces mono and stereo products in wav and mp3 products.
Thompson Electronics has generously waived mp3 royalities because of the
charitable nature and cultural importance of the Gutenberg archives to the
world community.
Programming schedules the book for early broadcast at the same time
the book is submitted for Gutenberg review. Funding Gutenberg is vital,
and that is done by fund raising, as for most non-profits. We see the
broadcasts as playing an important role in raising funds for Gutenberg.
3. By MP3 download rather than web broadcast?
You can pick your poison. A book gets a week's worth of air time and 4 to 6
weeks of download time at etc ... once it has passed Gutenberg review and
approval, it is permanently available for download from Gutenberg's
distribution network. On major holidays around here, we release cd images with collections of audio books.
4. What software would you need on your PC to listen?
Windows media player, Winamp, RealPlayer 8 (with streaming support)
and the xmms player (as well as many others) all work fine. Many browsers, such as mozilla, will play using the built in audio support.
5. Is there a list of works likely to be available in the near future?
We produce about a dozen new books a month, and, when the technology improves,
we re-issue previously released books to take advantage of the advancements
in the new production process. Any of the gutenbergers can instigate the creation of a new book.
Our plans (at etc ...) are to release :
The most popular works of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne.
Our favorite Edith Warton.
All of D.H. Lawrence.
The most popular Mark Twain.
Many of Dickens best works.
All of Balzac, who is an under-rated god of literature.
A lot of Victor Hugo.
Most of Thomas Hardy, a personal favorite.
and about 50 re-releases too ...
and I will change my mind on the drop of a pin... send in some requests.
6. Any charges?
None at all. This is an advertising expense for the prowess of the etc... team.
On the other hand, send those donations in to Gutenberg.
7. Can you tell me about your company ETC? (Where you are based, etc)
We produce bulk multi-media for distribution on cds, dvds and by broadcasts
using open source technologies - particularly audio for government, the
disabled and English as a second language readers, and videos of textual
simulation logs for government agencies and engineering concerns, and
music products for artists.
We use open source software running under linux in most cases.
DSI is our local isp and a distribution channel for our end products.
they are at http://www.dsi-us.com.
We are located in Metairie, a suburb of New Orleans.
-------------------
From: Ted Garvin
I tried to respond to the guy who wanted the 1914 book
on Baron D'Holbach, but the email address was bad.
Here is the link to the WorldCat listing.
http://www.tulsalibrary.org:2051/WebZ/FSFETCH?fetchtype=fullrecord:sessionid=sp05sw01-40089-df6o7t14-6j7kis:entitypagenum=4:0:recno=1:resultset=1:format=FI:next=html/record.html:bad=error/badfetch.html:entitytoprecno=1:entitycurrecno=1:numrecs=1
----------------------------------------------------------------------
--WHERE TO GET EBOOKS
http://promo.net/pg (aka http://www.gutenberg.net) allows searching by
title, author, language and subject. Mirrors (copies) of the complete
collection are available around the world.
http://www.promo.net/pg/list.html can get you to the nearest one.
These sites and indices are not updated instantly, as additional research may need to be done by our professional Chief Cataloguer, so for those who wish to obtain these new ebooks, please refer to the following section.
--"INSTANT" ACCESS TO EBOOKS
Use your Web browser or FTP program to visit our master download
site (or a mirror) if you know the filename you want. Try:
http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext04
or
ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext04
and look for the first five letters of the filesname. Note that updated
eBooks usually go in their original directory (e.g., etext99, etext00, etc.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
DISTRIBUTED PROOFREADERS NEEDS CONTENT
Thanks to very good recent publicity, the Distributed Proofreading
project has greatly accelerated its pace. Please visit the site:
http://texts01.archive.org/dp for more information about how you can
help, by scanning just a few pages per day.
If you have a book that has been scanned but have not yet run through
OCR (optical character recognition) please email pg@aldarondo.net
with information -- they'd be happy work on it.
Also, DP is seeking public domain books not already in the
Project Gutenberg collection. To see what is already online, visit
http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg/GUTINDEX.ALL (a text file), since the
online database doesn't reflect recent additions. Please email
charlz@lvcablemodem.com if you have books to send, or simply send them
(note that DP generally chops books to scan them, and usually does not
return scanned books).
More. . . .
Do you have Public Domain books your would like to see in the archive?
Can they be destructively scanned? If so send them to the Distributed
Proofreading Team!
Charles Franks
9030 W. Sahara Ave. #195
Las Vegas, NV 89117
We will also have this address in Chicago!
Charles Aldarondo
701 Riverside Drive
Park Ridge, IL 60068
Please make sure that they are _not_ already in the archive and please check
them against David's In Progress list at
http://www.dprice48.freeserve.co.uk/GutIP.html
to ensure no one is currently working on them. It would also be helpful if
you clear them before mailing the books, send the 'OK' lines to
charlz@lvcablemodem.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailing list information
For more information about the Project Gutenberg's mailing lists
please visit the following webpage:
http://gutenberg.net/subs.html
Archives and personal settings:
The Lyris Web interface has an easy way to browse past mailing list
contents, and change some personal settings. Visit
http://listserv.unc.edu and select one of the Project Gutenberg lists.
Trouble?
If you are having trouble subscribing, unsubscribing or with
anything else related to the mailing lists, please email
"owner-gutenberg@listserv.unc.edu" to contact the lists'
(human) administrator.
If you would just like a little more information about Lyris
features, you can find their help information at http://www.lyris.com/help
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Credits
Thanks this time go to Brett and George for the numbers and
the booklists, hi guys!. Mark for the now finished beer, Greg, Michael
and Larry Wall. Entertainment for the workers provided by Andrew
Collins and Hortense. Back to the agriculture for me. Better watch out
for the skindeep.
pgweekly_2003_05_07_part_2.txt
If you liked this post, say thanks by sharing it.