The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter 20th August 2003
eBooks Readable By Both Humans and Computers For Since 1971
Part 2
In this week's Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter:
1) Editorial
2) News
Distributed Proofreaders Update
Radio Gutenberg Update
3) Notes and Queries
4) Mailing list information
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1) Editorial
Hello,
In a hard week for PG, where the petty cash looks petty and the
computers keep going on the blink, sometimes it's hard to keep your
enthusiasm up and the motivation goes out of the window. Well, get
enthused and motivated folks, PG needs you to keep doing what you are
doing and not give up now! If you have any comments following
Michael's message from earlier this week please feel free to send
them. Here at the newsletter we would like to hear your views.
Also, today the newsletter brings you not one, but two new
correspondents, and if you are a reader of DP forums you are in for a
real treat! Talking of DP, just got room to sneak in a quick WELL
DONE! to Prishan, I'm sure you'll find more information below.
Happy reading,
Alice
(news@pglaf.org - If you hit reply, the mail you
send does not reach me and disappears into the ether, it's an
anti-spam policy.)
We welcome feedback and awkward questions at the address above. Please
feel free to send our general ramblings to a friend.
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2) News
Distributed Proofreaders Update
August is traditionally a time of the year when the 'Net quiets down
somewhat and people enjoy off-line activities. Nobody seems to have
told this to the folks over at Distributed Proofreaders. In fact,
things seem to be gaining more momentum this month around
DP. Attendance is steady, yet the number of pages proofed continues to
follow the upward trend of previous months. It already looks like the
August goal of 128,000+ will be well met and surpassed.
Behind the scenes, the tireless DP developers are finishing the next
major upgrade to the site. Joseph Gruber has been working on (among a
dozen other things) a new statistics page for proofers which provides
a variety of information to measure accomplishments. More about this
in upcoming issues.
Another buzz this week is about the Project Release Queue. These are book
projects which are in line with tickets, waiting to begin the proofreading
process. At this stage each book or text has been fully prepared for
proofreaders. There are presently over 1250 projects in the Q'. To
underscore the significance of this figure, two months ago there were
less than 250 projects prepared and waiting. All we need are
willing proofreaders to sail well beyond the 10K marker. The books are there,
ready and waiting
Finally, it would be an injustice to close out the week's review without
acknowledging the milestone of DP's ace proofer Prishan, who completed
his 50,000th page this week.
That's quite a stack of books!
Next week we'll take a closer peek into the Release Queue and get a glimpse
at the future shelves of Project Gutenberg.
Thierry Alberto
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Radio Gutenberg Update
http://www.radio-gutenberg.com
This week RG is running AEsop's Fables on channel 1 and The Lion, the
Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis on channel 2.
Many thanks are due to Robert Sheckley who has kindly donated
non-exclusive rights to a live reading of his story 'Bad Medicine'.
If you are interested in creating a slide-show with a soundtrack
from your favourite book, or piece of literature please mail us here
at news@pglaf.org and we will pass your message on.
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Improved Service
In a bid to make the newsletter more helpful to readers who may be
using screen reading software. We are able to offer the booklisting in
a different format to make your life a little easier. An example of
the changed listing is given below. If you would like either a daily
or weekly version of this list please email news@pglaf.org, and state
which version you require.
{Note to the unwary: this is an example.}
34 NEW ETEXTS FROM PROJECT GUTENBERG US
A Complete Grammar of Esperanto, by Ivy Kellerman Mar 2005[esperxxx.xxx]7787
The Female Gamester, by Gorges Edmond Howard Apr 2005[fmgstxxx.xxx]7840
[Subtitle: A Tragedy]
A Primary Reader, by E. Louise Smythe Apr 2005[preadxxx.xxx]7841
[Also posted: illustrated HTML, zipped only - pread10h.zip]
The Rise of Iskander, by Benjamin Disraeli Apr 2005[?riskxxx.xxx]7842
[7-bit version with non-accented characters in 7risk10.txt and 7risk10.zip]
[8-bit version with accented characters in 8risk10.txt and 8risk10.zip]
[rtf version with accented characters in 8risk10r.rtf and 8risk10r.zip]
[rtf version has numbered paragraphs; txt version has no paragraph numbers]
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3) Notes and Queries
Notes about home economics archive e-text collection.
At the beginning it was an email from Anne reminding Project Gutenberg
volunteers about an e-text collection available on the internet and
waiting for its proofreaders. The site is called Home Economics
Archive. It contains, according to the info on their home page, 605
books and 106 journal volumes connected to the degree studies in
housewifing, from the first third of 19th century. There are a lot of
praises and curses said about the Home Economics themselves, besides
my own deeply philosophical thoughts around the subject (but since all
this is not connected to the e-texts, I'll leave it to oneside).
Foremost, this an awesome collection of the articles on wide variety
of themes which reminded me of the cracked sea-chest packed with
dusted fashion-journals 150 years old from the loft in a grandparents'
house. Take for example, The art of rearing silk-worms? composed in
the year 1825 A.D. by Vincenzo Dandolo, in London. It definitely has
an aroma of the fairy-tale, where people in the foggy (in contrast to
nowadays) British capital used to grow up long cylindrical
caterpillars in their living rooms. Of course, besides the oddness of
the subject, it provides an interesting insight into natural sciences
before the theory of evolution.
Second, while not everybody, I guess, will share my excitement about
that kind of curiosity, then perhaps, an article by S. Freud dated
1920, may awake interest of most serious readers.
Finally the third aspect, as Anne mentioned in her email, can be
purely utilitarian to apply the actual knowledge of those people who
could (at least in theory) sew an evening dress or make wonderful jams
from strawberries grown in the backyard of their self-made
summer-houses. It certainly may serve this purpose, however, rather
than people in third world countries (who do not have usually an
access to the internet or even knowledge about computers, while they
do have a lot of personal experience about making jams and sewing
clothes), it may serve curious habitants of the lands covered with
supermarkets and shopping malls. Why not to try to build the cottage
using the designs of more than century ago or to cook according to
some old recipe. [Some of us do indeed do this - Ed]
So with all above in the mind, can one classify this type of e-texts
as suitable for PG or not? The PG search directions clearly state that
'Our Collection of E-texts is mainly about Literature, so don't be
surprised if it will be hard to find books on other subjects', there
are some, but they are a minority. Is it going to stay like this or is
it going to change? The contras of the expansion are quite clear:
impossibility to seize the immense and the limited amount of
proofreader/hours in a day. However, as times go by the boundary
between literature and non-literature becomes more and more blurred,
and who can tell what will be more interesting for the future
generations of e-readers, the fiction novel or the real such as 'Young
Woman's Guide to Excellence' written centuries ago?
The collection is well sorted, has easy and usable search engine and
provides both the images of the original pages and the plain
texts. However the plain texts are not formatted according to PG
standards and have plenty of typographical mistakes (like 'nothing; ;T
was mine, t is his' in Shakespeare quotation), so the reading is a bit painful.
As the concluding sentence, I want to say that in my still outsider
eyes, this collection is definitely worth having a proud PG mark on
it. May these notes serve a cause, and nice proofreading to all of you!
Gali Sirkis
You can find the website for the Home Economics Archive at
http://hearth.library.cornell.edu/h/hearth/index.html
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Credits
Thanks this time go to Brett and George for the numbers and
booklists. Thierry and Gali, looking forward to working with you more,
Greg, Michael, and Larry Wall. Entertainment for the workers provided
by Liz Kershaw and Andrew Collins.
pgweekly_2003_08_20_part_2.txt
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