July 3, 2009
From DPCanadaWiki
Volume 2, Issue #41--July 3, 2009
(Full listing of previous issues is available at DPC Newsletters)
Special Guest Article by Dr. Akrigg
First, my thanks to Quill for inviting me to make a guest appearance in the DPC newsletter to mark the second anniversary of PG Canada's launch.
The site was launched with a dozen or so original titles, and with many links to Canadian titles on the PG US and PG Australia sites. In a few days, we will be posting our 350th original title, due in no small part to DP Canada. Thank you!
Quill has asked if there are any comments I would like to pass along to DPC: any requests for particular types of books, or specific authors.
The quick answer would be no, PG Canada has no particular editorial policy, and relies on the collective wisdom of the volunteers to determine the books to be offered. Just keep up the good work!
But in fact there are some types of titles in the queues which can benefit from your special attention.
TITLES IN FRENCH
English and French are the official languages of PG Canada. The site is in both languages, and ideally not less than 20% of the titles being posted should be in French. So if you have any knowledge of French, by all means please consider spending some of your DP Canada time working on titles in French. DP Canada's titles in French have been carefully chosen to be attractive and interesting reading.
PROLIFIC CANADIAN AUTHORS
Some fine Canadian authors were very prolific. Two famous examples are L. M. Montgomery and Stephen Leacock, and it is a pleasure to acknowledge the continuing work on these authors being done at DP Canada.
There are other fine Canadian authors who were equally prolific, who are not as well known, and who are in need of our care and attention. If we don't look after our Canadian authors, who will?
FREDERICK NIVEN
I would like to make a special case for two authors. Frederick Niven (1878-1944) spent the latter part of his life in British Columbia, and was an internationally famous novelist. In April I had the pleasure of posting "The Transplanted" (1944), courtesy of DP Canada, as PG Canada's 300th original title. His 1937 novel "The Staff at Simson's" will shortly be appearing in P1. But Niven wrote almost two dozen novels. It would be very helpful if special attention could be paid to Niven titles when they appear so that PG Canada can offer a comprehensive selection of his works.
ADRIEN-GABRIEL MORICE
A second author to consider is Adrien-Gabriel Morice (1859-1938), an astounding figure who has the distinction of playing a major role in the history of British Columbia, but of later being a distinguished historian of Western Canada. His 1923 monograph (in French) on the missionary-explorer Émile Petitot appeared on PG Canada in May, again thanks to the efforts of DP Canada's volunteers. His celebrated 1905 English-language "History of the Northern Interior of British Columbia" is shortly to enter post-processing.[Ed: It's waiting to be picked up by an interested PPer.] But waiting for P1 is his beautifully written 1933 memoir, "Souvenirs d'un missionnaire en Colombie Britannique". Certainly you will find him a rewarding author to work on.
A LOOK AHEAD: COPYRIGHT ACT REVISIONS
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. The proposed copyright revisions brought forward before last fall's election had some unfortunate proposals to extend copyright periods for many photographs and certain audio recordings. These proposals were nothing like as catastrophic as the massive copyright extensions that we have witnessed in the U.S. and Europe, but it is certainly time to make matters clear to all of our political parties that the Canadian people will no longer tolerate attacks on the public domain, no matter how minor they may seem.
LET'S CELEBRATE!
Two years have passed since PG Canada was launched. With your assistance, we have surpassed what any of us could have expected. The future is bright: let us continue our useful and enjoyable mission of preserving and promoting our cultural heritage.
Best wishes to everyone for a marvellous summer!
Mark Akrigg
Editorial
PG Canada is TWO years old!!"--PGC has just passed their second anniversary and it is still going strong. If you haven't been to the website, you will find that it is laid out differently from the main Project Gutenberg site. To start, it is in both English and French; then if the book is in French, Dr. Akrigg has provided the introduction in French.
As with PG-INT, there are Wikipedia links; but Dr. Akrigg has also provided links to other websites that contain information about the authors, illustrators, and/or related information. For some well-known authors that have books posted on PG-INT or PG-Australia, he gives links to those books as well: which certainly saves time in searching. If you'd like to read some of Hans Christian Andersen's children's stories in Danish, links are provided for those as well.
Stats--We now have 698 members; at this rate, we should have member number 700 sometime in the next few days and most definitely before the next newsletter comes out. I think that's great.
DP-Int Board of Trustees Election--And the new trustees are (in alpha order): fvandrog: Frank van Drogen, rfrank: Roger Frank, and TheEileen: Eileen Gormly. jhutch: Joshua Hutchinson and Simple Simon: David Jones were the other candidates. Congratulations to those won and those who lost--without whom there would have been no election.
PG-INT Copyright Clearances--CPers and PMs who apply to Simple Simon for copyright clearances need to check out his comments under Simon Says….
Server and site problems--Simple Simon advises that any remaining problems on-site are set aside now until the "synch-up".
With respect to our "site code synch-up" which is supposed to take place this summer, there are the "usual" technical glitches and hiccups cropping up. [So what else is new?... :shaking head: ] However, Simon says: Never fear, all will proceed, and there will be no interruption in DPC operations. See his comments below.
Checklists--As promised several months ago, Simon has been producing basic checklists for DPers. He started with PPing basic checklists for simple projects: he has done checklists for startup, text version, HTML version, HTML Tables, "illustrations"--for PPers and CPers and CSS. The final item on Simon's PPing list is "tools for PPers": sounds interesting.
Simon has created a wikipage (linked to the main DPC Wiki) for the Checklists for New PPers. He has included the checklists that he has done so far. You can see from the Table of Contents what he plans for future checklists.
Any and all comments and/or questions from PPers are requested and welcome. Anyone else can comment as well. Send any questions or comments to Simple Simon.
Once the PPing checklists are done, he'll do some for CPing and PMing.
ÜberProjects--see the updates below. For those that are interested, Simon has decided that he's going to post periodicals to PG-Int as well since the ones we are doing are all pre-1923. It will also give DPC work greater coverage.
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. And you can do so anonymously if you choose. It doesn't have to be long: a sentence or two, a short paragraph or two, or more if you really like to "talk"; send a PM to Quill.
Simon Says...
Congratulations to PGC, and its leader, Mark Akrigg, on their second Anniversary!! Certainly (with a little help from their friends) they have achieved marvels and far surpassed what any of us would have believed just 24 months ago.
Not only quantity but quality and completeness have been achieved--Mark has cultivated both "work-flow" sources--like DPC and DP-EUR, and solo contributors, including many of DPC's members. A good mixture of genres, languages and types of material have produced an archive with many attractive features for the reader. And Mark does yeoman work in providing interesting explanatory material, sources and related links.
Great work, Mark. Looking forward to another great year.
Recently, we had a new project where the pages were not encoded properly in UTF-8. Rather than delete them, and re-OCR, I suggested an attempt to "convert" the text files. Using a utility I had discovered on the 'Net, this was done, with great success. As a result, I promised to make this utility available to everyone, in case this happens again.
The software, called "Text Encoding Converter" is a piece of freeware, very easy to use and lightning fast--took only 3 seconds to convert the entire directory of text files from the project in question. It is completely self-explanatory.
Software, a very small file, is now available for download from my directory on dpscans. If you need it, but don't have dpscans access, email me to send you a copy.
Due to a few occasions on which we wound up "competing" with DP-INT for a project (all resolved in a friendly way), I would like to urge a new approach re copyright clearances. Of course, if the book was published after 1922, there is no problem because DP-INT won't work on it. But for older books, there is a possibility that we wind up having "overlapping" clearances.
David Price maintains a list of all clearances issued by PG-INT, and we try to consult that regularly to avoid working on books already under way elsewhere. But the safer procedure for a pre-1923 book would be always to apply for a PG-INT clearance. The book will then appear on David's list and will not normally be started at DP-INT or DP-EUR after that time. Of course, you must act on the clearance within a reasonable period, or it will "lapse".
This will not prevent overlaps with solo contributors or PG-AUS, who frequently do not consider what others may be doing.
If you would like help with applying for the PG-INT clearance, or posting the book to PG-INT, once we've finished it, just ask me.
I will shortly be contacting all CPers or PMs who have requested a DPC clearance, but not started a matching project, to check on the reason, and inquire whether they would like to release" their reservation, so someone else can work on the book.
We continue to attract new members, some of whom come from DP-INT. They frequently ask "what are the differences" between the Guidelines at DP-INT and DPC. I have committed to produce a list comparing the main differences, and publish it on the Wiki.
Now Iona has taken me a long way in the right direction, by kindly preparing a draft list--so I guess I no longer have an excuse not to complete it. I'll do so as soon as I can. BUT see the item below.
coachmike and I had our weekly chat about problems and priorities on Canada Day. One of the major subjects was our project to "synch up" our site code with DP-INT's, thus gaining their new features and eliminating many of the differences between the sites (but we're keeping our ellipsis rules, "match the scan" emphasis and other concepts we've agreed upon).
I had been about to announce that we would miss the self-imposed deadline of August 1, due mainly to the size of the project, and the problems with gaining agreement at DP-INT to make the changes--we are literally proposing to modify every page on their site!!
[There are many benefits from doing this--DPC/DP-INT "synch-up", the eventual ability to provide what is called "localization"=member-selected language for every feature on the site, and several others, all important.]
Anyway, we decided that we would re-dedicate ourselves to do everything humanly possible to meet the deadline. This means that both of us, and the little band of helpers who assist mike with the software work, will be largely unavailable for the next 4 weeks. Please be patient if PPVing and communications tends to be slow during this period.
Congratulations to all members--every round made its June target. This was especially amazing in the case of F2, who have been sorely missing Chef Uwe the last few days. I'm sure everyone will join me in wishing him a speedy recovery from a hospital visit, currently underway.
Get well, Uwe--we miss you!!
As you may have observed, we are coming up towards our 700th member and 200th book completed--we, too, have achieved wonders!!
Finally, congratulations to DP-INT on the successful completion of their Board Elections--yours truly did not succeed in being elected, but the candidates who are now Board Members are all fine people, with a broad range of relevant skills. Perhaps it's as well I was not elected there, given the time pressures of my work for DPC.
Cheers Simon
Revisions to Guidelines, FAQs and the DPC site code
Guideline Differences--See article at beginning of the April 10 issue. Simon has made some further comments in his article above.
Combined Proofing and Formatting Guidelines-- The eventual "combined guidelines" will be a very summarized version, not a complete document--but it's a huge task, which is the reason for the delay in issuance, among other tasks that are keeping Simon very busy. Even DP-INT has no such animal--so we can't copy theirs. Once it is drafted, Simon will ask for review by experienced proofers and foofers to ensure that it is understandable--that is, not confusing or missing some extremely important rule.
New DPC site code--It's coming, it's coming…. See Simon's comments above.
ÜberProject #1: Chronicles of Canada
There continue to be lots of spaces for volunteers to PM, PP and even CP. To see the current status of the volumes, check out the ÜberProject wiki page for The Chronicles of Canada here: http://www.pgdpcanada.net/wiki/index.php/The_Chronicles_of_Canada.
- De2164 and IonaV are doing the prep on the rest of the volumes. Sufficient PMs have volunteered--we just need PPers, but the volumes can be picked up from the PP pool when they have completed the rounds unless there is a volume that a PPer really wants to do--in that case let the PM know sooner rather than later.
- We've arranged to get "mint condition" copies of the full set and so will be able to get good scans of all the maps and illustrations as well as picking up missing pages (if any). Thank you to hugger1935 for the use of the books.
- Volumes 4 and 12 have been split into multiple parts and are being used for BEGIN projects. A number of parts of each volume are sitting in P1: Waiting (English BEGIN) until they are needed; several parts are currently in various rounds undergoing proofing or formatting; and several parts of each volume have made it through to PPing though they won't be finalized until all parts are done--that may take awhile depending on how many newbies we get.
- Volume 14 is in P1: Available, Volumes 9 and 32 are in P2: Available, Volume 6 is in P3: Available; Volumes 11 and 21 are available for Post-Processing; Vols. 3 and 18 have completed PPing. There are several in New Project being prepared for the P1: Waiting queue.
- PP standards have been set and the books do not have anything extremely difficult at all. Check the Chronicles wiki page for the PP standards. Some of the standards for PPing have been updated.
- Volumes 13, 17 and 24 are being done at DP-Int since the authors of these volumes are out of DPC's copyright purview. They will be posted to PG-Int in due time. For those that are interested, the books are all in the P3 waiting queue.
- Seven volumes have been posted to PGC:
- Volume 1: The Dawn of Canadian History, A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada,
- Volume 2: The Mariner of St Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier,
- Volume 5: The Seigneurs of old Canada: a Chronicle of New World Feudalism,
- Volume 8: The Great Fortress: A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760,
- Volume 20: Adventurers of the Far North, A Chronicle of the Arctic Seas,
- Volume 27: The Winning of Popular Government: A chronicle of the Union of 1841, and
- Volume 29: The Day of Sir John MacDonald, A Chronicle of the Early Years of the Dominion.
ÜberProject #2: Jesuit Relations
Vol. 65: Lower Canada, Mississippi Valley, 1696-1702, our first, is currently in F2: Available. Simple Simon is the PM and has decided that he will definitely PP this first volume, though he says that he will undoubtedly seek help from someone fluent in French to "look over his shoulder" on that side of things. He'll probably do the same for other languages as well.
Vol. 66: Illinois, Louisiana, Iroquois, Lower Canada, 1702-1712, our second, is in F1: Available. It is just like Vol. 65: strange characters, old style French spellings and accents, bits and pieces of other languages--lots of fun.
Vol. 67: Lower Canada, Abenakis, Louisiana; 1716- 1727 is now in P1: Waiting.
A set of standards has been determined and added to the Project Comments. An ÜberProject wiki page for Jesuit Relations has been created. It includes the basic instructions for proofing and formatting.
ÜberProject #3: Governor General's Award Books
Warmheart has created an ÜberProject page for this uberproject. The page looks very good and has lots of links. You can see the details of what she has completed to date here: http://www.pgdpcanada.net/wiki/index.php/Governor_General%27s_Literary_Awards Check it out, you might find something interesting there....
There are only a couple of books that are available since many of the authors are still alive--ah, well, we'll get them eventually. :)
ÜberProject #4: Periodicals
Graham's Magazine is the first part of our ongoing periodicals ÜberProject. All the first year's volumes are either in process or completed. There are five issues currently undergoing proofing or formatting with one in P1: Waiting. One issue is in PP and five issues have been posted to PGC.
Year two will be coming in due course.
Simon also needs some volunteers for PPing these periodicals--if you are interested, send him a PM.
Our Young Folks, An illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls; Issued monthly; Publication Dates: January 1865 thru October 1873 when it merged with St. Nicholas.
Three issues are in PP with two completed, three issues are undergoing proofing or formatting. Warmheart also has three in P1: Waiting and the final four of the first year are in prep.
Warmheart's wikipage for the Periodical can be found through this link: http://www.pgdpcanada.net/wiki/index.php/Our_Young_Folks.
Scientific American--these are very early issues, too--from 1846. The first issue is now in PP. That one sure went fast … I hope Simon has more being prepped. :wink:
We've started a wiki page for it: http://www.pgdpcanada.net/wiki/index.php/Periodicals/Scientific_American. I've also been told that Tizz has agreed to co-PM/PP it.
The Maple Leaf--This is a Canadian juvenile periodical published between 1852 and 1854. Susan and IonaV are going to share the duties of PMing. Iona is handling the prep, Susan has downloaded the scans and will do the PPing. They are hoping to get it into the rounds within the next week or so.
A wikipage has been created: http://www.pgdpcanada.net/wiki/index.php/The_Maple_Leaf
Remember, these aren't the only periodicals that we can do--there are lots of others out there and some that are very different than "Graham's". Is there one that you'd like to do? Suggestions for favourite OLD periodicals are always welcome, but they must meet 3 criteria:
- published before 1860 to avoid the need for copyright checking
- good quality scans of a reasonable number of issues (preferably in whole volumes=a year)
- interesting content, out of the ordinary
ÜberProject #5: Works by Charles Dickens
Simple Simon and IonaV are Dickens fans. We know that there are many more out there. Although there are some of Dickens' works on the other PG sites, some of it is text only. We've got early editions of those books with illustrations as well as stories that have not yet been posted. As well, there are letters and essays and ...
- Bleak House, the original version illustrated by "Phiz", is in prep.
- The Mystery of Edwin Drood is currently in F2: Available.
- A Christmas Carol is in post processing.
- Two short stories for our anniversary blitz are posted to our wiki (http://www.pgdpcanada.net/wiki/index.php/Dickens_%22First_Anniversary%22_project): The Christmas Tree and What Christmas is as we get older. They will be posted to PG Canada with other Dickens' short stories.
More details and an ÜberProject wiki page to come.
We Grow Every Day
We are now up to 698 members. Welcome to all new members; I hope you find some projects that you will enjoy doing. Many of our members are also members of DP-Int/US and/or DP Europe--we welcome them and thank them for all their continued support and interest in DPC. (Numbers are accurate up to "press" time.)
| New | |
|---|---|
| July 2009 | 1 |
| June 2009 | 14 |
| May 2009 | 19 |
| April 2009 | 22 |
| 2009 Q1 | 168 |
| 2008 total | 235 |
| 2007 total | 239 |
| Total to date | 698 |
Milestones
We are going to use this space to "celebrate" notable milestones achieved by a member, team, group or project. For example, we'll report when a member completes 5,000 pages in any one round; then we'll let you know when they've done 10,000 pages and so on.
The "team" numbers are the cumulative totals for each round for each member while they are members of a particular team. So that's why, the team pages go up whenever a team member's totals increase. Another reason to join a team or two....
Completed 35,000 pages in a round:
- uwe-joachim in F2
Completed 30,000 pages in a round:
Completed 25,000 pages in a round:
- rolands in P3
- Team USA in P3
Completed 20,000 pages in a round:
- Foofers' Corner in F2
Completed 15,000 pages in a round:
- Team Canada in P1
Completed 10,000 pages in a round:
- Bibi in P3
- De2164 in F1
- Team Canada in P2
- Team German in F2
- Foofers' Corner in F1
- LOTE Flotes my Bote in F2
Completed 5,000 pages in a round:
- Adair in F1 NEW!!!
- Daniel G in P1
- rcool in P1 and P2
- snowseraph in P2
- supo88 in P2
- Warmheart in F1
- yajeulb in F1
- hugger1935 in F1 and F2
- Team USA in P2 and F2
- Team Canada in F1
- Team German in P3
- DPing with Cats in P2 and F1
And how many pages have been done in each of the rounds? Naturally, F2 will be at the bottom since they are the last round that gets the projects before PPing and P1 will be on top since they get to start all the projects. :grin: Another consideration is that P3 or F2 stats may be slightly smaller if the PM/PPer has skipped his/her/their project through either one or both of those rounds. So let's see where each round was at the end of June:
- P1 completed over 94,000 pages
- P2 completed over 85,000 pages
- P3 completed over 75,000 pages
- F1 completed over 75,000 pages
- F2 completed over 60,000 pages
Great work, people!!!
Proofing & Formatting Stats
ALL rounds reached their June page goals; some sooner than others, but who's really keeping track…. :wink: Way to go, people!!!
As with last month, we've only had 2 full days for people to proof and/or foof; so we'll wait until the next issue before trying to figure out which round may end up finishing first. Though F1 certainly looks like they want to be first--they are already reaching for 20% when the rest of the rounds aren't yet at 10%!!
| Round | P1 | P2 | P3 | F1 | F2 |
| July goal | 3,410 | 3,410 | 3,100 | 3,410 | 3,100 |
| *July to date | 270 | 309 | 279 | 679 | 204 |
| July to date % | 7.92% | 9.06% | 9.00% | 19.91% | 6.58% |
| June goal | 3,300 | 3,300 | 3,000 | 3,300 | 3,000 |
| June final | 6,560 | 5,018 | 3,815 | 5,647 | 3,025 |
| June final % | 198.75% | 152.06% | 127.17% | 171.12% | 100.83% |
*Numbers accurate to "press" time.
For more statistics and related links go to: Statistics Central.
Books In Process And/or Posted To PG Canada or PG-International
At press time, we had 190 Gold Star books posted to PGC or PG-Int (with 4 in PPV). Fantastic work, all.
There are currently 154 Silver Star projects in post processing and 137 Bronze Star projects which are currently undergoing proofing or formatting. For more details about these projects, please see the listings on the bottom of the DP Welcome page.
User Team Talk
Have you checked out our user teams? To check out the teams or to join one go to: User Teams. The Team threads are located under Proofing Team Talk. Is there a team that you'd like to see? You can create a team from the link on the User Teams page--you might be surprised by who shows up to join you.
We currently have 23 teams; more are always welcome.
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. You can also be anonymous if you choose ... we won't tell.
- 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.
- Quotable Quotes: have you seen a thought-provoking quote that is relevant to the DP Community while you were doing your proofing that you just had to pass on?...
- 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, Bouquets & 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....
