PG Weekly Newsletter: Part 2 (2003-09-17)

by Michael Cook on September 17, 2003
Newsletters

The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter 17th September 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, Reviews and Features
   Notes from Posted
4) Mailing list information


Editorial

Hello,

Another small special this week looking at the multi-media aspects of
PG. The idea for this newsletter came from a discussion on one of our
volunteer lists. 'Let's do the movies' they said. The first choice -
well, Gali has kindly supplied a feature below. Mike Eschman also
gives us his reasons for starting Radio Gutenberg, and Greg Newby,
along with his plea for more help with music, gives us an update on
what donations are for when it comes to Project Gutenberg.

Happy reading,

Alice

send email to the newsletter editor at: news@pglaf.org

Founding editor: Michael Hart hart@beryl.ils.edu
Newsletter editor: Alice Wood news@pglaf.org
Project Gutenberg CEO: Greg Newby gbnewby@pglaf.org

Project Gutenberg website: http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg/
Project Gutenberg Newsletter website: http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg/newsletter
Radio Gutenberg: http://www.radio-gutenberg.com
Distributed Proofreaders: http://www.pgdp.net
Newsletter and mailing list subscriptions: http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg/subs.html
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2) News and Comment

Donations update from Greg Newby

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The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was formed
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Greg Newby
                    -------------------

Call to arms - The Gutenberg Bible

Guess what? My wife thinks PG has the Gutenberg Bible
online. We don't.

This _LARGE_ project will require an army of
volunteers (including me) who are willing to surf to
http://prodigi.bl.uk/gutenbg/default.asp and save the
images onto their hard-drives manually, then another
army to convert the color files to B&W so that another
army (of one) can train Abbyy Finereader to recognize
it so that we don't have to type it in (although we
_WILL_ if we have to). Then it will hit DP and go
through proofing.

An immense project but one well worth doing. They said
we couldn't/shouldn't/wouldn't, but we will.  

Won't we?

Contact garvint@yahoo.com to enlist. There are no 4Fs
in _this_ army.

Ted Garvin
                    -------------------

Other news items this week

Project Gutenberg is interested digitized music in all forms.  We
have a large-format scanner suitable for sheet music, and have
released musical scores in Finale and MusicXML formats.  We would
welcome MIDI, Lilypond, and other formats, as well.  Visit:
	http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg/music
for our current sheet music offerings and files available for
processing.  Contemporary scores (with copyright permission) and
older musical plays would also be of interest.  As for all 
Project Gutenberg items, the first step is to get copyright
clearance (http://beryl.ils.unc.edu/copy.html).

-----------------------------

New York is Book Country is being held this week. A  street market is
happening on Sunday 21st Sept in 5th Avenue between 11am - 5pm. Juliet
sutherland is planning on attending to purchase lots and lots of juicy
materials to send PG's way. She would like to hear from you if you
are able to attend, particularly if you own a laptop you can take with
you to check David Price's list. Please mail us here at news@pglaf.org
if you are interested, and we will pass your details on.

-----------------------------

Library for sale

Charles Norton, a Cincinnati resident, Mark Twain scholar and former
librarian is moving into a retirement community. His 11,000 volume
personal library (including 800 books by or about Mark Twain) is up for
sale. A URL is given below for more information, there is no
information in the article as to how many of these might be pre-1923.

http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2003/09/13/loc_twainscholar13.html

Many thanks to Ken Reeder for this item

----------------------------

Music - Help with Finale and Sibelius

The current music files in PG are in Finale format, and Joel Erikson
is hoping to convert them into Sibelius. There's only one problem. He
could really use help from someone who has a copy of Finale to do this. If you
think you can help Joel in any way, please mail him at joel at
oneporpoise.com, or mail us here at the newsletter and we will pass
your message along.


                    -------------------

Distributed Proofreaders Update

So much to write about so little time and space. This is a very
(active) week at DP. After a little post-DP2K nap in early September,
we are back up to cruising speed. Actually we're already making the
jump to light-speed. The past two days were among the top ten in page
productivity for all of 2003. The next few days are likely to join
that club, maybe even the Top 5. You'll need to tune in to find out.

Of course there are other components of the success story of this
month than the focus on daily page counts can ever indicate. A cross
section of a day's labor at DP reveals that there is much more going
on here than proofreading. What we try to do each week with this
column is explore the various departments of production that work
together in producing finished texts for Project Gutenberg. There are
some very interesting developments going on in the many workshops of
DP spread out across this planet of ours. As these are silent and
often solitary labors, they don't tend to register in the day to day
flurry of site activity.

In a structural sense, DP works quite a bit like a film studio. The
Proofing Rounds are comparable to the actual movie shoot, and like
this stage in a film's life, this is the activity which generates all
the buzz. Surrounding the active center are two processes which are
the most labor intensive because they are in the hands of just a few
individuals sometimes only one person. Charles Franks and his team of
coders are developing methods for distributing some of the larger
processes, but up till now and for the immediate future, these tasks
are overseen individually.

The initial stage is the Preparation Process. This can be called, for
convenience, 'Pre Production,' as it's objective is to prepare a text
for the on-site work in the Proofing Rounds. Next week we will explore
the preparation stage in detail. The third stage is officially called
'Post Processing,' as it takes the many pages of a proofed text and
weaves them all back together into a single text file. The final
segment of this process is 'Verification,' where all preceding work is
checked on all points of significance, before final submission to
Project Gutenberg. Today we will take little bit of a closer look into
DP Post Production.

When a project finishes the Second Round it's a little messier than
you might imagine. The shadow side of the distributed advantage is
the vast variety of proofing styles, manners and comprehension of the
Guidelines. It is the Post Processor's (undeclared) job to be Governor
of all the proofers who worked on a particular text. This can be tough
work sometimes, depending on the complexity of the project. One of the
significant developments to arise within DP is the construction of a
set of program tools that have expedited the daunting labor of both
Pre and Post production. Room does not allow me to do justice to the
work which has gone into producing these tools. We will learn more
about them when we look into Pre Production. In a future column I will
focus exclusively on these programs, after some interviews with their
creators.

For the first year and a half or so at DP, it was often the Project
Manager who carried a text through Post. As this was the same person
who had done all the preparation tasks, this was a labor intensive
job. The increase in the number of projects moving through the Rounds
demanded both innovation and some form of distribution for the post stages,
and with time and hard work such a system evolved. Along with the program
tools a Forum was created dedicated solely to Post Processing, where
questions could be answered growing over time into a collected body of
lore which new processors continue to draw upon for guidance.


In late 2002 the Post Processing Queue was created to organize the
projects after completing Round 2, this encouraged a wider audience
to participate. In 2003 certain projects were partitioned into small
segments that provided a means for interested proofers to expand their
participation. Also this year the Verification Queue was initiated and
has proven a great assist in maintaining a steady flow of completed
texts. One of the side benefits of the Verification Q' is that it
provided a key component in a monitor system that allows Project
Managers and System Administrators to easily keep track of the entire
work flow of projects at DP. In previous columns we have explored the
'Project Release Queue,' those texts in line for release into the
first proofing round. The other Q's are equally as exciting to watch,
and reveal those projects which are on the doorstep of the PG library.

Another little known fact about the Verification stage is that it
serves a secondary purpose to supporting the Post Processor's
craft. During Verification, experienced Post Processors are guided and
trained by existing Verifiers until eventually they are skilled enough
to submit projects directly to PG.

There is much more to the Post Production process. The aim here is to
open the door and peek in over the shoulders of the processors and to
broaden our sense of another of those 'quiet' labors which fall under
the heading of Distributed Proofreaders. It's an ongoing journey which
this column will continue to tag along on and hopefully explore a
little further each week. Stick around! ...things are just getting started.

I cannot close this week without a mention of something that has just
unfolded today. Bill Keir, one of DP's System Administrators has added
a new wing to the forums. We now have an independent branch set aside
specifically for Project Discussions. This expands upon the existing
Project forum by creating two entirely new forums. One is an archive
for the discussion threads of projects that have passed through DP and
now live within the stacks of PG. This provides a reference resource
that can help future projects which face similar challenges to elder
DP texts. It is also a fun playground for those who like to explore
history or just rekindle fond memories of of their participation in a
particular project.


The second new project forum is dedicated to large scale or special
need projects. If you are interested in watching DP strut down the
avenue in one of its best suits, this is a place to park your
browser. As mentioned a couple of weeks back,  one of the most
impressive successes of this project is that by distributing the labor
of digitization the 'realm of possibility' has expanded in many
directions. Large scale projects that were simply too overwhelming for
individual developers are now either possible or at least worth
serious consideration. To understand what actually constitutes a
special project, visit the forum. Bill has appropriately titled it
'UberProjects,' and he has provided clear descriptions of how the
forum works and what qualifies as 'Uber.'

Well that's about it for this week, except a little bit of good news
for the 'Night Owls' in the audience, you now have a place to go when
sleep is not a desired option. It seems that somebody had a idea that
it might be fun to get together in the final 2-3 hours of each day and
see whether DP had met its Daily Page Goal yet. If not, then these
Distributed Insomniacs have something fun and productive to do on-line
for a little while. It seems to have taken root, so if that sounds
like something to your taste, visit the General forum and look for the
'Midnight Crew.' Mind you, that's a relative concept in this Global
age ... so if it's 12AM in Bombay, you can't sleep, join up and set
the pace for the whole day to follow.


I want to express my gratitude to Tonya for working with me on this
issue's column. Next week, we will take that closer look into the Pre
Production steps, and begin our conversations with the tool developers
of DP. We'll also get a sneak peek at the hot features that are
appearing in the new site upgrade, coming soon to a monitor near you!

All the best to each of you!
And to our friends in or near the path of Isabel, be careful out there!
Stay safe and dry!

Thierry Alberto

                    -------------------

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.


If you are interested in which etexts and authors have been turned
into audio ebooks, a list can now be found on the Radio Gutenberg website.


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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{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]
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3) Notes and Queries, Reviews and Features

Nosferatu

There are surprisingly many story lines connected to this single
black-and-white piece of silent film, where in bright midnight light
the bat-like vampire is coming to the unsuspicious human habitat on a
ship with the dead captain banded to the wheel.

First is the story of the movie itself : a bastard child of gifted
German director Friederich Wilhelm Murnau conceived illegally from the
well-known novel 'Dracula' of late Dubliner Bram (Abraham) Stoker
(1847-1912)
(http://www.gradesaver.com/ClassicNotes/Authors/about_bram_stoker.html).
The beautiful but jealous widow Florence Stoker was so furious about
this adultery, that she had almost immediately started the copyright
law-suit against movie and its creator.  The naïve and feeble attempts
of camouflaging the true source of movie plot, like changing the names
of people and places, didn't help much and the verdict of the court
was tough - to stop the film distribution and to burn (like a real
witchcraft possession!) all existing copies of it. Sounds bad, huh?
However there are always people that do not obey the law. Depending on
its profitability for us, we call this fortunately or unfortunately
quality of human behavior. In this case it is commonly agreed to use
the word 'fortunately', at least by the horror movie lovers and cinema
historians. Several pirate copies survived the calamity, so PG now is
able now to bin it for amusement and scarring of future
generations. The edifying thing is that the trial actually gave the
final 'kick' to the whole blood-sucking theme in general and to the
Stoker's 'Dracula' in particular, the history of vampire horror
entertainments was started and the widow Stoker became rich from the
copyright percentage (pay attention, oh PG people, to the Power of Publicity!). 

Second there is the story in the movie. When the fable plot is more or
less preserved to be same as in original novel, the essence and
characters are quite different. The interpretations of the changes are
abundant and various. Most of them, naturally, have strictly
freudistic character, because it seems that unlike the novel, where
the brave humans are fighting the 'bad guys'- vampires, the movie is
more like an obsessive love story. The vampire is not the cold-blooded
and even somewhere charming aristocrat, looking on humans as on a menu
in a restaurant, but the unhappy hideous creature tortured by desire.
Many say that the maniacal Count was the reflection of Murnau's
illicit love to the killed boy-friend Hans. The Jim Shepard's
fictional biography of the Murnau called also 'Nosferatu' is strongly
supporting this version.  

Thirdly, it is the story about the making of this movie. 'The
historical landmark', 'the blueprint', 'great classics of film' are
the most widely used epithets regarding this Expressionist classic on
the 8-mm film. The negative and superimposed images and the oddly shot
scene angles of Murnau are, as they say, the very grammar of art-film
making. Another innovation was the usage of natural stages, blurred
and strangely shaped by special effects. Ellen sitting in the dunes
covered with iron crucifixes or strange angles of the castle are the
classical examples of the strange emotions brilliantly transformed to
the visual images. As Murau said by himself "I like the reality of
things, but not without the fantasy - they must dovetail. Is that not
so with life, with human reactions and emotions? We have our thoughts
and also our deeds." 

The last story is about the director. Friederich Wilhelm Murnau was
born as Friederich Wilhelm Plumpe in the small German town of
Bielefeld, on Dec. 28, 1889. After studying Philology and later Art
History at the Universities of Berlin and Heidelberg respectively, he
studied in Max Reinhart's drama school by direct invitation of Max
Reinhart himself. Then came the war and F.W. was mobilized to German
air force. Young actor's serving in the army during WW1 is quite
remarkably reminisant of the 'Catch 22' lines - After seven (!) crashes
of his airplane, he succeeded finally to get lost in the fog and land
in the neutral Switzerland, where he happily remained interned till
the end of hostilities. There he performed in theater and in exchange
for the safety made a lot of propaganda films for the German
embassy. Back in Berlin after the war, he formed a production company
(Murnau Veidt Filmgesellschaft) and made several movies in noir-Gothic
fashion like 'Der Knabe in Blau/The Boy in Blue'(1919), and 'Satanas'
(also 1919). Then he makes his first (and more successful) attempt to
violate the copyright law by making movie based on Stevenson's
"Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", called "Der Januskoph/The Janus Head"
(1920). All those movies are lost in the time-space so the first
remaining one is "Der Gang in Die Nacht/The Gang in the Night" (1920).

The fame started to burn its incense to Murnau-director only in 1922
after Nosferatu. Then "Der Letzte Mann/The Last Laugh" in 1924
established his international reputation and he was invited to
Hollywood*. He was customarily unhappy overseas, complaining about too
much pressure and control from the money-power people, since his first
project, "Sunrise" (1927), was extremely artistic and extremely
non-profitable. So Murnau's wings were significantly cut by initially
generous William Fox, by induced happy endings and other tricks that
supposed to make the new movies more life- and
money-supporting. Naturally, F.W. broke his contract and made few
documentaries with the newly-established Colorart company. The new
company was artistically supportive but also naturally not
profitable. So after the bankruptcy of Colorart, he sponsored the new
movie 'Tabu' from his own pocket. Then in March of 1931 F.W.Murau was
killed in a car accident before the film premiered. 

The final shots will be of the world today - the search for Nosferatu
in Google gives 275.000 links. Not all of them are about the movie,
there are plenty of horror games and infernal stories, when the name
itself is already a common noun, representing vampire clans and forces
of dark. The remake of Nosferatu in 1979 together with the new
rock-based score are mostly curiosities and almost forgotten
already. The freshly made 'Interview with a vampire' where the
respectable actor Max Schreck was portrayed as a real vampire, is not
so bad according to reviews, however will probably survive in history
mostly by the connection with it's famous prototype - the black and
white piece of silent film, where in bright midnight light the
bat-like vampire is coming to the unsuspicious human habitat on ship
with the dead captain banded to the wheel		

That's all, folks.   

Nosferatu final titles:
Director:
 F.W.Murnau
Screenplay:
 Henrik Galeen
Year Released:
 1922
Starring cast (in alphabetical order):
- Gustav Botz .... Dr. Sievers, Town Doctor 
- Karl Etlinger .... Sailor 
- John Gottowt .... Professor Bulwer 
- Alexander Granach .... Knock 
- Wolfgang Heinz .... First mate 
- Guido Herzfeld .... Innkeeper 
- Ruth Landshoff .... Lucy Westrenka 
- Max Nemetz .... Captain 
- G.H. Schell .... Westrenka 
- Max Schreck .... Graf Orlok/Nosferatu 
- Greta Schr?der .... Ellen Hutter 
- Albert Venohr .... Sailor 
- Heinrich Witte .... Sailor 
- Hardy von Francois .... Doctor in Hospital 
- Gustav von Wangenheim .... Hutter 
Original score:
	Hans Erdmann (1887-1942) A recording of this spine-chilling
	masterpiece is available on CD on the RCA Victor Red Seal
	label, catalogue number 09026 68143 2.

And few useful internet sites:

http://www.hollywood.com/celebs/bio/celeb/1676735, for nicely written biography
http://www.phillyburbs.com/halloween2001/dracula/nosferatwo.shtml, for
a funny freudistic plot interpretation
http://www.sloppyfilms.com/murnau/nosferat.html, for real passionate movie review


And for those who like the author of these notes do not like the noir and vampires,
see http://www.whitehouseanimationinc.com/kunstbar.htm
for nice illustration of influence of the art on our lives 

Gali Sirkis


* Gali's original version of these notes stated 'Hollowood'. Please add your own irony - Ed

                    -------------------

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Today our efforts are focused on accent reduction, correct pronunciation of 
French, Spanish and Native American place names, resolution of accents in 
homographs and speed.  Our ultimate goal is to create a machine that can 
audio enable the Library of Congress in one year, unattended. We have dubbed 
that machine "Deep Thought".

This quarter we are working on a new process that will allow users to create a 
desired book on demand, and follow the progress through a web-based 
"dashboard". This process will allow us to keep the hundred or so most 
popular requested audio books available for immediate download as a zip file, 
a set of .mp3 files or a CD image, with any other work in the collection 
available through "on-demand" creation. 

Over the long term, we have five major goals :

1 - More human reading style for all Gutenberg audio books.

Current activities include place name databases, homograph dictionaries 
and phrase level automatic diagramming for inflection. With these
features in place, the speech synthesizer and our automatic 
editor may achieve parity with locally available volunteer readers,
and superiority in many cases.

2 - Establishment of a broadcast network on the internet.

If we had 50 icecast broadcast servers in operation today, each hosting four 
monophonic broadcast channels, for a total of 200 channels, that would provide 
a reach similar in kind to a PBS, and provide a venue for fund raising.  

3 - Creation of new works for the collection.

When the funding mechanisms have achieved a state of equilibrium, we hope to 
fund festivals, camps and workshops that bring together young unknown talent 
for the purpose of creating new teleplays, musical compositions and
stories for distribution by Gutenberg. Bringing musicians and writers
together on a campus with facilities to produce video will allow
budding composers to try their hand at writing sound tracks, something 
unavailable anywhere today.

4 - Procurement of copyrighted works for the collection.

Our most basic activity in this vein is in securing copyright permissions for 
pre-existing works.  Our efforts are focused on the C.S. Lewis Chronicles of 
Narnia, the SciFi channel's collection of classic science fiction (one author at a 
time), Fordham University's Internet History collections and ESA/NASA materials. 

Long term we hope to garner a number of works from PhD candidates at
accessable universities, especially in chemistry, medicine and
physics. Our primary sources for these materials today include the
Michoud Shuttle External Tank Assembly Facility, NASA's Stennis Space
Flight Center, University of Maryland and University of New Orleans.

Still very preliminary and speculative, we are also attempting to
procure musical performances by the Louisiana Symphony Orchestra and a
group of graduate students at the University of Akron.

5 - Creation of Video works for the collection.

The Solar System series Jon and I have been working on for the past year or so 
began as a text only draft of the "Encyclopedia of the Solar System" 
ISBN 0-12-226805-9 major planetary chapters at opensourceschools.org.  
Since then, we have begun to separate the materials into volumes that 
address the role of the gravitational influence and state changes in the 
character of the Solar System, and feature new, original 3D videos that 
demonstrate the main features of the Solar System as we understand them today.

The first volume of this series is due to be released on December 10th as a 
DVD in the Gutenberg collection.

We are also engaged in preliminary assessments of DVD based text books on 
algebra and geometry.  These textbooks will be unique in that they use 
visualizations to demonstrate how a field project's data are typically 
collected, indexed and inferentially expanded into a summation using the 
tools of algebra and geometry.  We hope that this approach will result in the 
reader acquiring the "right" sort of curiosity in the world, when procedural 
skills are acquired because insight and intuition demand them.  In this way 
the "ethos" of a theorem or algebraic translation procedure is revealed in 
the context of a real world problem.  As a basis, we are selecting materials 
from water diversion projects here in Louisiana that intend to reclaim lost 
marshlands, and also environmental impact statements by both the EPA and 
Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries / Louisiana Department of Natural Resources.

Long term, we hope these works establish the necessary preconditions for 
Gutenberg to become the publisher of choice for new studies of the ecology of 
North America's gulf coast.

This probably sounds like a lot for two people to pull off.  It really isn't 
in terms of the man-hours required.  And other non-profits could provide what's 
needed without spending a dime (the physical facilities are paid for and 
under-utilized). Putting it all down on paper has been a tad
disheartening, but that too is an illusion. All it takes to make this
reality is for the right people to say "OK". I hope that starts with you.

Thank you, patient reader for making it this far.  Your comments are
most welcome, especially if you decide to embark on your own new
projects in a similar vein.

Mike Eschman, Founder of Radio Gutenberg.

                    -------------------

Quiz

The answers to last weeks' quiz are below. Mary Wilson almost wins the
newsletter Smartypants award as she was the only person to submit an
entry, but she had switched two answers. Instead, she wins our eternal
gratitude, and shame on the rest of you. So, the Smartypants award
stays in the cupboard for a rollover next time. Thanks again to Tonya.


ANSWERS:
The theme of this one is children's books:

1. Anne of Green Gables etext92/anne11.txt

c. Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main
road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders
and ladies' eardrops and traversed by a brook that had its
source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place.


2. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz etext93/wizoz10.txt

f. Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with
Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer's
wife.


3. The Secret Garden etext94/gardn11.txt

d. When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor
to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most
disagreeable-looking child ever seen.


4. A Little Princess etext94/lprss11.txt

a. Once on a dark winter's day, when the yellow fog hung so thick
and heavy in the streets of London that the lamps were lighted
and the shop windows blazed with gas as they do at night, an odd-
looking little girl sat in a cab with her father and was driven
rather slowly through the big thoroughfares.


5. Five Children and It etext97/fivit10.txt

g. The house was three miles from the station, but before the dusty
hired fly had rattled along for five minutes the children began to
put their heads out of the carriage window and to say, 'Aren't we
nearly there?'


6. The Princess and the Goblin etext96/prgob10.txt

h. There was once a little princess whose father was king over a great
country full of mountains and valleys.


7. The Jungle Book etext95/jnglb10.txt

b. It was seven o'clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills
when Father Wolf woke up from his day's rest, scratched himself,
yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of
the sleepy feeling in their tips.


8. Black Beauty etext95/bbeau10.txt

i. The first place that I can well remember was a large pleasant
meadow with a pond of clear water in it.


9. The Wind in the Willows etext95/wwill10.txt

e. The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-
cleaning his little home.

{Hey, I got that one - Ed}
                    -------------------

Notes from Posted

Inspired by this weeks' suggestions about where it is possible to
source etexts from, Gali takes a look around the internet to find out, well...

just what is out there?


After shallow dive in the slightly troubled waters of web Orbis
Tertius, I've fished out several sources for e-texts with one thing in
common - they do not have a clue about PG. No link or ever
mentioning. They do know each other, though. OK, indeed, I am a
stranger in PG debris, with infinitely small understanding of the life
behind the emails, so let's go to business:

Starting from the most familiar for myself: http://lib.ru - library of
Maxim Moshkov contains huge amount various books in Russian. While it
might be a problem with Russian copyright, the Russian classical
literature is widely available there - Tolstoj, Pushkin and Gogol for
sure will not sue PG for the unauthorized e-copies of their work. The
translations are also readily available upon request. Cooperation of
PG with this source of e-text has one more important point - The
potential proofreading power of Russian readers is enormous - most of
them are literate, enjoy the process and have an access to the internet. 
From lib.ru my quest for books about Till Ulenshpiegel led me to the
nice little collection of French classical literature:

http://abu.cnam.fr/BIB/index.html

Their copyright required the mentioning of the e-source which
definitely will not harm anybody. Almost none of the books from this
site are in GUTVOL index file in their mother-French version.

The bunch of e-text collections below are cross-referenced and one of
them, the Virginia one claims to the one of the largest e-text
collections with 6000000 downloads in a year, as far as I
remember. BTW in connection to Hawthorne biography from previous
newsletter issue - they possess the full documentary of Salem witchcraft trials

http://etext.virginia.edu/salem/witchcraft/texts/transcripts.html,
which would be nice to have together with the Hawthorne collection. 

http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/centers.html 

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu 

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/indiv/ets/ 

http://www.web-books.com/Classics/Default.htm


Then few very rich in information sites with all kind of ancient texts
in original Greek and Latin - the real challenge for DP, as well as in translations

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ - which itself has plenty of texts
such as code of Hammurabi
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/hamcode.html in English or to
the Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War in Greek with
embedded forms http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/thucy1.doc . It
also provides good live links to plenty of historical documents, such
as early Egyptian literature, e.g. http://www.egyptology.com/extreme/mehy/.

You can also have a look on :
http://www.iuscivile.com/materials/sources.shtml 
for Rome originated documents and papyruses. Or on
http://www.sikhs.org/transl.htm you can find beautifully composed
Morning Prayer by Guru Nanak.

Uf, I have to accent slowly from the water: my oxygen counter shows
almost 0 already ? So hope it will help or give a material for
thoughts, or at least add few more texts for PG collection ? it would
be a shame to waste this amount of information, waiting for the future
generations to dig it out from the deep waters of the ancient source
of human communication - the mysterious and infernal Internet.

Gali Sirkis

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Credits

Thanks this time go to Brett and George for the numbers and
booklists. Thierry, Gali, Steve Herber, Michael and Tonya, Greg,
Michael, and Larry Wall. Entertainment for the workers provided by
absolutely no-one as my internet connection wasn't working so I
couldn't get 6music (Dear Santa, for Xmas please can I have a digital
radio?).

Also,

Subject: Smthng intrstng
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it
deosn't mttaer in what oredr the ltteers in a wrod
are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and
the lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be
a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit
porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter
by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.

Takhns to Gali!

pgweekly_2003_09_17_part_2.txt

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