January 4, 2008
From DPCanadaWiki
Issue #2: January 4, 2008
(Full listing of all issues is available at DPC Newsletters)
UberProject #1 Started!
Our first UberProject is underway. On December 20, 2007, Simple Simon, our Site Admin announced, in cooperation with Mark Akrigg from Project Gutenberg Canada, the start of UberProject #1: The Chronicles of Canada. The series is edited by George McKinnon Wrong and H. H. Langton with each volume written by various authors. Some of the authors are well-known Canadians such as Stephen Leacock and William Bennett Munro.
This is a 32-volume set about the major figures of Canadian history from the aboriginal beginnings up until Post-Confederation Canada and was aimed at young people in the early part of the 20th century. The first 16 volumes have been put on Project Gutenberg but only in text form. So, if your interest for this project is as we suspect it will be, we're starting with the 16 volumes that have not yet been done, then will continue to re-do the others, adding HTML versions as we do them.
The "first" volume is Vol. 29: The Day of Sir John A. Macdonald and is being PMed by IonaV. Mark has provided us with very clear scans and illustrations. Simple Simon will PP the first one; and then we'll have a very experienced PPVer (do we have any other kind?) rake it over thoroughly. We'll lay down some PP standards for the series so that others who wish to PM or PP will have an easier time.
Proofing of the 220 pages is going very quickly, too; Vol. 29 started P1 on December 29, and started P3 today. WOW!!
Any PM or PP, who is interested, is invited to send a pm to Simple Simon to let him know which volume(s) they would like to do. Depending on the interest, we may even be able to have more than one volume in a Round at a time. For more information on the volumes, please see the forum thread under UberProjects. Already other PMs have expressed interest in working on other volumes.
Editorial
Happy New Year to all and best wishes for a safe and productive 2008.
We have started our first UberProject: The Chronicles of Canada. For more details, see the article above. We are hoping for lots of interest.
As well as New Year's Day, January 1 is Public Domain Day (see article below). Canada is a Life+50 country; therefore, works by authors who died in 1957 are no longer protected by copyright and are now available for us to work on and post to PGC. Simple Simon has posted some information in the Providing Content Forum.
Simple Simon has provided his first article--I think you will find it very interesting and informative.
Do you make New Year's Resolutions? I don't often do so--I have problems keeping them; but then I think that many people do. One of our assistant editors (IonaV) tells me that her New Year's Resolution is going to be assist in revising the Proofing and Formatting Guidelines--both to make them compliant for DPC use but also in general format for the rest of the DP community.
Artists of words and drawings--have you seen our contest? We need your creativity.
Starting with this issue, we will also be sending the Newsletter to you by email. You'll get both the inaugural Newsletter for December 21, 2007, and today's newsletter. Then every other Friday, after the Newsletter is published on the DPC Newsletter wiki page, we'll send out the new issue by email. If you would rather not receive the Newsletter by email, you may "unsubscribe" by following the link at the bottom of the email.
Check out the list of "possible future articles" at the end of the newsletter--are you interested in contributing or do you know of someone who could, or would like to, contribute, we'd love to have your article and/or thoughts.
Public Domain Day--January 1st
Public Domain Day is the day on which copyrights expire and works are put into the public domain. In many places, Public Domain Day is on January 1.
DP-Int/US celebrates Public Domain Day as a special day by releasing works for proofing/formatting that have become public domain somewhere around the world on that day. Because of the unique nature of U.S. copyright laws, many of the books released are already in the public domain in the U.S. but were not in the public domain in other countries (such as Canada which has Life+50 copyright laws) until that day. The opposite also may be true. This is one of the reasons that DPC was created.
See this topic thread for a link (provided by labradorian) for other information.
Simon Says... "Oh, it's gonna be a Great Year!!"
Let's begin by saying "it's been a Great Year" (2007), even though for DPC it was only one month long. Our launch was a magnificent success story, thanks primarily to the hard work of all of the members. Really, despite the normal crop of "teething" problems, it could hardly have gone any better. We exceeded the targets that coachmike and I set--by wide margins--and posted 8 books to Project Gutenberg Canada.
Programming and Site Code
To get rid of those teething problems, and to bring DPC into "synchronization" with our big sister, DP International, we plan to execute the "Great Leap Forward", hopefully sometime in the first quarter of 2008. Rather than spending programming resources on fixing up the glitches in our existing site code, we intend to adopt the same site code used by DP-INT, with several notable exceptions--all improvements.
In simple terms, coachmike will energize an effort to execute a 3-pronged update of the site code:
1) we will add all of the features needed to make the site code fully UTF-8 compliant (we need it and DP-INT will need it soon) 2) all of the "techies" will add many of the features that have been suggested by members over the past year 3) all features to be added (including the UTF-8 ones) will be made "switchable"--or as the programmers refer to it, parameterized
Then, the Site Admin of each site will decide which features to "turn on", and flip the appropriate switch. Effectively DP-INT and DPC (and DP-EUR, if they so decide) will be using the same site code, and all future updates will extend to all sites.
Promotion and Recruitment
As we grow into the New Year, one of our greatest needs will be to attract, retain and motivate new members. We expect to continue to have new members join us from DP-INT, and maybe DP-EUR, while continuing their volunteering there.
But we need to make contact with new members in Canada, and those people overseas who have a "soft spot" for Canada. To do this, we need to raise public awareness of DPC and its activities--we made a beginning by launching [http:www.pageaday.com www.pageaday.com] and we'll continue to push it up the search engine charts.
We need to get DPC into the media, with articles and opportunities for interviews, or even features, on radio and TV. DPC's site is regularly being "crawled" by the robots and spiders of Google and other search engines; this is good and will result in higher "page ratings" for our site. We also need to get our site linked to by other sites.
So any suggestions you have on this front will be welcome, and acted upon. Maybe each of you could also identify, approach and attempt to recruit one new member for DPC, from amongst your non-DP friends or acquaintances. Do tell us how these efforts go--what works and what doesn't.
Training and Development
We will be undertaking a complete re-working of all the Guides and FAQs early this year, and we will need your help. We'd also like to bring the existing translated versions into "synch", and make them available.
And we're going to add a completely new type of Wiki page, aimed at summarizing the various tasks volunteers can undertake--content provision, project management, proofing, formatting, PPing and other specialized tasks. Each will contain descriptions and checklists, plus screenshots of the various steps, to help new volunteers settle in and become productive quickly. We believe this will also reduce the number of new registrants who "go away" without ever becoming comfortable.
"Display" Site
We plan to launch a new website to feature the completed projects of DPC volunteers. It will also "double" as a mirror for the PGC site, so these valuable e-books will always be guaranteed to be available. The "display" site (we need a name, folks!) will have a quick-loading "landing page" with nice graphics, a page for the work(s) of each author whose books we digitize, with bio, bibliography and maybe a picture, book search capability, special pages for each genre, internal search capability (you'll be able to find all books containing the word "emu" or the phrase "Vertical Mosaic", for example), book reviews and summaries, an archive of our Newsletter, and many more features (what do you suggest?)
Whew, I'm tired already! Welcome to 2008.
Simple Simon and coachmike
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.
We Grow Every Day!
At the time of the DPC launch on December 1, 2007, we had 95 members signed on; we added our 200th member on December 16; our 237th member by midnight December 31; our 250th member on January 3 and to press time we number 251. 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.
| New | |
|---|---|
| January 2008 | 14 |
| December 2007 | 142 |
| to Nov. 30, 2007 | 95 |
| Total to date | 251 |
Proofing and Formatting Statistics
Our members continue to be very productive. Every day you continue to out do the goals set by Simple Simon and coachmike. December daily goals were 30 pages for each round; monthly goals were 930 pages for each round. As of press time, the new daily and monthly goals had not been set; however, we still need to keep up the good work and show Simple Simon and coachmike that December wasn't a fluke.
| Round | P1 | P2 | P3 | F1 | F2 |
| January goal | 930 | 930 | 930 | 930 | 930 |
| January to date | 611 | 709 | 532 | 355 | 428 |
| January % | 65.70% | 76.24% | 57.20% | 38.17% | 46.02% |
| December goal | 930 | 930 | 930 | 930 | 930 |
| * December final | 8,243 | 5,479 | 3,566 | 3,784 | 3,052 |
| December % | 886.34% | 589.14% | 383.44% | 406.88% | 328.17% |
* may be out by a page or two
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. At midnight on December 31, 8 books had been posted to PGC and at press time, we have 8 Gold Star books posted to PGC (with 1 waiting for PPV). Way to go, guys!!!
There are currently 14 Silver Star projects in post processing and 26 Bronze Star projects which are 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 with Team Canada just edging out Team USA for top spot.
Possible 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.
- Tips or Hints: for those people who do/did a lot of proofing and/or formatting on DP-Int/US &/or DP-Eur, do you have any tips or "rules" that you follow to help yourself while you proof or format? Even a re-wording of a guideline that helps you remember how to do something specific.
- Tell us why you joined DPC.
- 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 obscene language, it will not be published).
- New projects: PMs is there a series of books or books by a very prolific author that 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.
- Kudos & Compliments: are there any DPers that you would like to give special thanks and/or recognition to: a mentor who gave you lots of guidance, a PPer that made your project into a very wonderful looking book for posting to PG, a CPer or image/text preparer who went the extra little bit to provide you with clean scans, well OCR'd text, or good illustrations for your project, another DPer who made you feel really welcome or provided you with some good advice or....
- "Guest articles" by anyone and everyone who wishes to....
