December 21, 2007
From DPCanadaWiki
Issue #1: December 21, 2007
(Full listing of all issues is available at DPC Newsletters)
Contents |
Wildly Successful Launch of DPC!
Distributed Proofreaders Canada (DPC) launched on December 1, 2007, at 12:01 A.M. EST (GMT -5), with results much greater than imagined by the site founders. The successful launch was due to the enthusiasm, and hard work, of our members. We want to extend our sincere thanks and gratitude to our members for their efforts on December 1. At 2:29 A.M. EST we had 14 members online--our most ever.
Our first 2 books were: Relation originale du voyage de Jacques Cartier au Canada en 1534 (“Relation”) and An Account of Six Years’ Residence on Hudson’s Bay (“Hudson’s Bay”). “Relation” finished all proofing and formatting rounds on December 4 at 10:26 P.M. EST; finished post processing and was posted to Project Gutenberg Canada (PGC) on December 10 at 11:26 A.M. EST. “Hudson’s Bay” finished all proofing and formatting rounds on December 12 at 1:56 P.M. EST and is currently in post processing; we are hoping that it will be posted to PGC very soon.
Since December 1, we have added another 38 projects including the very first Turkish language project in all of the DP community. Being a UTF-8 site, we can handle almost any language.
Editorial
Distributed Proofreaders Canada was founded in 2007 by Michael Shepard and David Jones to support the digitization of Public Domain books. Our inspiration was Distributed Proofreaders International (DP-Int/US), originally conceived to assist Project Gutenberg (PG). Just as DP-Int/US is now the main source of PG e-books, we expect DPC to become the main source of e-books for Project Gutenberg Canada (which was launched on July 1, 2007). All our proofreaders, managers, developers and so on are volunteers. The main principles of our mission are to: (1) preserve Canadiana, one page at a time, (2) take advantage of the favourable copyright laws in Canada to make books published after 1923, written by authors who died at least 50 years ago, more available to the public.
DPC gratefully acknowledges the donation of FineReader 7.0 Scripting version by Abbyy Software--makers of fine Optical Character Reading (OCR) products. This application will allow us to OCR books printed with fraktur fonts.
Recently, we launched a new website www.pageaday.ca to promote DPC. If you haven’t already had a look, please do so; it looks great and the music encourages you to click on the GO PROOF NOW link.
We look forward to an exciting future in preserving our literary history and hope that you will be a part of that future as well.
The publishers of this Newsletter (Simple Simon and coachmike) would like to see bi-weekly issues, so as you’ll see below, I will need your help filling the pages.
We Grow Every Day!
At the time of the DPC launch, we had 95 members signed on; we added our 200th member on December 16; to date we number 219. Many of our members are also members of DP-Int/US and/or DP Europe. We welcome them and thank them for all their support in getting DPC launched and also thank them for their continued support and interest in DPC. (A little bird tells me that our founders continue to be amazed at the support that DPC is getting.)
| New | |
|---|---|
| December 2007 | 124 |
| to Nov. 30, 2007 | 95 |
| Total to date | 219 |
Proofing and Formatting Statistics
Our members have been really busy this month. Every day you far out do the goals set by Simple Simon and coachmike. And we’re only two-thirds of the way through the month, too! ....Ah..., somebody find chairs for them before they fall down.... Someone get some water, please....
| Round | Goal | Done | Percent |
|---|---|---|---|
| P1 | 930 | 6,302 | 677.63 |
| P2 | 930 | 3,345 | 359.68 |
| P3 | 930 | 2,141 | 230.22 |
| F1 | 930 | 1,931 | 207.63 |
| F2 | 930 | 1,619 | 174.09 |
Note: above numbers were accurate at "press" time.
Psst, I think they plan to increase the goals for January “radically”. Well, we’ll just have to prove to them that we can do it, won’t we?
For more statistics and related links go to: Statistics Central.
Books in Process and/or Posted to Project Gutenberg Canada
Our first book was posted to PGC on December 10, 2007. To date, we have 2 Gold Star books posted to PGC.
Hey, PPers and PPVers, there are currently 11 Silver Star projects in post processing; do you think we can get most of them done before the end of the year and give Simple Simon and coachmike another reason to grin?
There are also 21 Bronze Star projects currently undergoing proofing or formatting. For more details about the projects see the listings on the bottom of the DP Welcome page.
User Team Talk
Have you checked out our user teams? To check out or join go to: User Teams. The Team threads are located under Proofing Team Talk
Currently we have 12 teams:
- Aussies
- DPing with Cats
- Illustrators
- Mommies
- Team British Columbia
- Team Canada
- Team français
- Team German
- Team Hungary
- Team Philippines
- Team U.S.A. (has the most members so far!)
- Team UK
Grateful Thanks To DPC Member(s)
By IonaV
The Five Jars was my first PM project. With the talents of many DPCers doing the proofing and formatting, it has now reached post processing. I would especially like to thank Frau Sma (who proofed and formatted and is now PPing) as well as mcbax and ortonmc (who both proofed and formatted many pages). I also want to thank markbear for finding the book for me to do. My sincere thanks to everyone who helped; I really appreciate your hard work.
I have decided that I like PMing and have already got another one in the system: Three Came to Ville Marie is currently in P3; but it does need a PPer.
Contests / Competitions—let your creativity run wild....
You’ve probably seen topic threads under the Promotion of DP Canada forum ... basically, how can we improve DPC? If you have any ideas, let us know. Simple Simon and coachmike won’t make promises, but they’d like to know what you want to see improved and/or changed.
Newsletter Title Contest:
“DP Canada Newsletter” is rather bland, don’t you think? I could use your help to devise a better one. Something French/English or English/French or ... but it must still mean “newsletter” in some fashion. Send a pm to Quill by January 15, 2008. I’ll then publish the list and you all will be allowed to vote on the proposed names.
Newsletter Tag-line Contest:
I don’t have one yet, or any ideas, do you? So start creating (yes, you can look up those old quotations that you learned in school for ideas ...). Send a pm to Quill by January 30, 2008 and then we can all vote on the results. If you use wording from someone else (living or dead), please be sure to provide the applicable credit.
Calling all artists and wannabe artists:
Simple Simon has suggested a mascot for the newsletter and I thought, why not a mascot for the DPC site? After all, they already are asking for ideas to improve look of the DPC site. I did like his suggestion of a “beaver working on a book”; however, use your imagination. If some of you are “paper and paint/ink/pencil/pen” types and need help getting your creation into an electronic format, I’m sure one of our illustrator types or CPers would be glad to give you help or provide instructions on how to scan it. Closer to the deadline (probably sometime in February), I’ll provide a link for uploading your finished entries. All entries should be properly credited.
For the above contests, you may get the assistance of anyone for ideas, but be sure you give your assistants credit for their part.
Future Articles
This is YOUR newsletter: yes, there are forum posts and user team posts, but is there something that you want to tell the whole DPC community? You are allowed to brag here.
- tell us why you joined DPC
- what was the most interesting, outrageous, or strangest line you proofed—before it was proofed (if that was the outrageous or strange part) and what it was after proofing (please do not submit profanity or other gross language, it will not be published)
- PMs is there a series of books you’d like to do?—let us know so that we can help pass the word to the proofers so they’ll be there to jump in and work on them
- “guest articles” by anyone and everyone who wishes to
Simple Simon has promised that he’ll write an occasional article called “Simon Says ...”.
