July 4, 2008
From DPCanadaWiki
Issue #15--July 4, 2008
(Full listing of previous issues is available at DPC Newsletters)
Special Guest Article
Dr. Mark Akrigg
It was a pleasure to be invited by the Editor to make a contribution to The Beaver Bulletin on the occasion of Project Gutenberg Canada's first anniversary! And I would like to thank Simple Simon for his generous words in the June 20th newsletter.
When PG Canada was launched a year ago, the only objective was to make sure that the site came into existence. There was no long-term plan, and this was deliberate: I was more than busy enough creating the basic website. My own feeling was that we would start with an objective of one book per month, then work up to four books per month in 2008.
What in fact happened was that within days of the site being launched, I was receiving offers of help, and, in particular, by the end of the year, DP Canada had been launched.
The result of this is that in June 2008, for example, a total of 14 books was posted, of which 8 were created by DP Canada: more than triple my original forecast for the site.
A special strength of DP Canada is that because of its collaborative nature and the multiple rounds of proofing and formatting, very complex projects can be undertaken.
So, congratulations to everyone! Thanks to your endeavours, PG Canada's future is looking very bright.
Featured Book Review
By Simple Simon
One of my recent PM projects is The Georgian Bay, an Account of its Position, Inhabitants, Mineral Interests, Fish, Timber and Other Resources. Sounds dry as dust, official, statistics-laden and dull, right? The truth is far otherwise.
The book is charming, lightly-written and fascinating to me--effectively a travelogue detailing a trip around the Bay in the Summer of 1837 by an intrepid band of adventurers in boats and tents. Of course, it does contain a great deal of factual information about all the resources and so on, and tables of facts abound. But it has poetry, beautiful little sketches by one of the travellers, and pictures in words of the people they met, the scenes they saw, and the adventures they experienced.
But my interest goes much deeper. The Georgian Bay, a large off-shoot of Lake Huron running from Collingwood at the south to Killarney and Manitoulin Island at the north end, is the heartland of Ontario's Great Lakes country, home to the 30,000 Islands, the Bruce Peninsula, the best fishing area in Ontario, unbelievable scenery, sunset vistas, First Nations reserves, wildlife, and over three centuries of history of the settlers and farmers of Central Ontario. It is my second home.
I spent many years swimming, cottaging, learning to sail, canoeing, logging, skiing, fishing and learning about the native wildlife, and built friendships that persist even today--forty years later. Summers, and Winters too, added to my knowledge of Canada's country, flora and fauna, and always another gorgeous view around the next corner.
And now it starts again--my older son and his family live on a farm just south of Midland, in Tiny Township (named after one of the dogs of the wife of Governor John Graves Simcoe). Though he commutes to his forensic police-work just north of Toronto, they all live in the heart of some of the most spectacular scenery in the world--wildlife all around, clear skies to watch the stars, peace to contemplate your philosophy or your navel, and 12 minutes to the beach for sunset swims!
I was able to persuade one of our DP-INT colleagues to let me transfer the project over to our work-flow, it has completed the rounds, I've PPed it, and am currently cleaning up after the PPV commentary. It should be posted to PGC in a week or so, and if I say so myself, is a beautiful book with stunning illos, decorations and drop-caps.
Try reading it when its posted--just 140 pages, easy reading (you can skip the tables, if you like), and a brilliant picture of what life was like in those simpler times.
Editorial
PG Canada is 1 year old--PG Canada is 1 year old--I cannot believe that PG Canada has been around for only 1 year--seems like longer; but then the last year has been very busy. To the end of June, DPC had posted 60 books to PGC: that's an average of 8.5 books per month--not bad considering that DPC is just 7 months old itself.
I'm so glad that we have PG Canada; now we who live in Life+50 countries can have access to books published later than 1922 (PG-Int's cut-off) but that are in our public domain since the authors died in 1957 or earlier. My heartfelt thanks to Dr. Mark Akrigg for his wonderful efforts in creating and managing PG Canada. Be sure to see Mark's own inaugural article above.
Speaking of first birthdays--did you know that in less than 5 months DPC will be having its first birthday--that's right: December 1, 2008. As I noted above, in 7 months we have posted 60 books to PGC, can we make it 100 books by December 1? That means CPing, proofing, formatting and PPing an average of 8 books per month. I think we can do it…. PPVing and WWing are done by a very, very select few people and I think that we might be able to persuade them to work harder if we do our job on the processing and get the books done for them.
I must thank De2164 for his suggestion about adding a link, to the newsletter, on DPC's Front Page (aka Welcome page). There have been many, many more hits on the individual newsletters since then. There is also a link on the Activity Hub page, but the Front Page link allows people to access the newsletter without having to log in. Of course, that also means that people who are not DPC members can look at our newsletters, see the kinds of things that we do and then decide if they want to join us.
Many, many thanks, DAvid. :thumbsup:
What are you going to do over the summer?--Think about it; I'll ask again in August. Comments can be as simple/short as: Sunbathed, Read X books, Typed my fingers to the bone while proofing, Travelled to.…, etc. Nothing long or fancy. Thanks for the idea, Warmheart.
ÜberProjects--more are planned. See comments under ÜberProject #4 below and Simple Simon's recent post in the ÜberProject #1 forum thread: http://pgdpcanada.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=5405#5405 .
Revisions to the Formatting Guidelines--If you've been following the forum thread (see below for the link), you will have noticed that there is a difference in opinion as to whether or not any proofing-related "standards" should be included with the Formatting Guidelines.... Simple Simon wants to reiterate his promise that he will put together a combined Proofing/Foofing wiki page for those Formatters who like to have only one document open at a time but also want to be able to check on certain Proofing Guidelines.
Comments regarding bad links to FAQs and Guidelines--The links to the Proofreading Guidelines that appear on the various "round" pages of our website have been corrected. However, the ones that are automatically imbedded in Project Pages, and the ones in the proofing interface are still not completely correct. Code development is underway, but it's a bit flaky, depends on "parsing" which round a user is in, then serving the appropriate guideline--soon, says coachmike.--I've been advised that coachmike is still at work on this; though some other things have slowed down the process, it will get done. We just have to be patient.
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 anonymouslyAnd you can do so anonymously if you choose. It doesn't have to be long: a sentence or two, a short paragraph or two, 500 words or more if you really like to "talk"; send a PM to Quill.
Puzzles, Mind Games, Conundrums....
So did you think about the puzzle? Now your result may not have been exactly like the "official" solution. I did remind Simple Simon that not everyone thinks alike. ;) Some people don't need pen and paper to solve puzzles--the answer just "comes", it's called heuristic reasoning. There are times that I wish could think like that…. :? As long as you correctly answered who gave books (and how many) to Deborah, then you solved the puzzle and it doesn't really matter how you worked out the answer--as long as you didn't peek. :D
The puzzle:
- Mr. Reader's five daughters each gave books for the summer holidays to one or more of her sisters.
- Each presented four books, and each received four books; but no two girls allocated their books the same way--e.g., only one gave two books to one sister and two to another.
- Bessie gave all her books to Alice; Cissie gave three to Edith.
- Who were the donors of the four books received by Deborah?
I got one entry; it was from deepbluesea and she had the correct answer:
Deborah received 1 book from Cissie, 1 from Alice and 2 from Edith. Her detailed solution from the little spreadsheet she created: * Bessie gave 4 books to Alice. * Cissie gave 3 to Edith, 1 to Deborah. * Alice gave 1 to Bessie, Cissie, Deborah and Edith. * Edith gave 1 to Bessie, 1 to Cissie and 2 to Deborah. * Deborah gave 2 to Bessie, 2 to Cissie.
Simple Simon has provided the "correct" solution as follows. The correct answer is "Deborah received one book from Alice, one from Cissie and two from Edith." The complete solution is: There are 5 ways to allocate the books: (a) 4-0-0-0; (b) 3-1-0-0; (c) 2-2-0-0; (d) 2-1-1-0; and (e) 1-1-1-1. By making a table, you can successively "mine" the apparently sparse facts given to determine:
| A | B | C | D | E | |
| Alice | - | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Bessie | 4 | - | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Cissie | 0 | 0 | - | 1 | 3 |
| Deborah | 0 | 2 | 2 | - | 0 |
| Edith | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | - |
So distribution (a) is Bessie's; (e) must be Alice's: (b) is Cissie's. Now Edith has received 4 books, so distribution (c) is Deborah's. And column D gives the solution.
Revisions to Guidelines, FAQs and the DPC site code
Revisions to the Formatting Guidelines. Simple Simon started a thread ( http://pgdpcanada.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=479 ) for comments. He promises to get on with the revisions very, very soon. Though I think he does need a bit of a vacation, don't you?
Of course, we'll keep working our way through all of the FAQs and Guidelines, one by one--does anyone have any suggestions for other areas/activities that should have Guidelines or FAQs prepared?
Guidelines translations--Simple Simon has found a translator for the French version of our Proofing Guidelines which, since we plan to be a bilingual site, is the most important. Translators for other languages are still needed, so…send a PM to Simple Simon if you would like to help. All that's necessary is the translation--we can put them into wiki page format.
Finally, we hope to upgrade and synchronize our site code with that of DP-INT or at least as close as we can since DPC is a UTF-8 site where DP-INT works in iso-8859-1. At that point, we'll be able to add more complete services in other languages, and effectively translate much of the site. However, that is still a few months off--it’s all that software code...; we must thank coachmike for all his hard work and try not to get too frustrated with the waiting….
When we upgrade our site code, we’ll also be getting WordCheck with its Good Word and Bad Word lists--I know that there are lots of people who are waiting for WordCheck. I am....
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 prepped 9 volumes, so there's lots to do.
- Volume 3: The Founder of New France, A Chronicle of Champlain is in F2: Available. Volume 18: The Adventurers of England on Hudson Bay, A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North, is in the P1: Waiting queue. Volume 1: The Dawn of Canadian History is in P1: Waiting. Volume 27 is listed as a New Project. Volumes 2 and 5 are in Post-Processing.
- 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.
- 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.
- Two volumes have been posted to PGC: Volume 20: Adventurers of the Far North, A Chronicle of the Arctic Seas and Volume 29: The Day of Sir John MacDonald, A Chronicle of the Early Years of the Dominion.
ÜberProject #2: Jesuit Relations
We've been working on our first volume (Vol. 65: Lower Canada, Mississippi Valley, 1696-1702) for just over 5 months now--it's no longer a test after this length of time; it's currently in P3: 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.
Simple Simon has downloaded a second volume: Vol. 66: Illinois, Louisiana, Iroquois, Lower Canada, 1702-1712 and is in the process of prepping it. It will be just like Vol. 65: strange characters, old style French spellings and accents, bits and pieces of other languages--lots of fun.
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 has been confirmed as the first part of our ongoing ÜberProject #4: Periodicals. Simple Simon has the entire first year of volumes in hand and will release them as demand calls for them. There are 4 volumes currently undergoing proofing and/or formatting: one each in rounds P1, P3, F1 and F2. The 5th volume is now waiting in the wings....
Since Simple Simon is getting busy with other things, so he wouldn't mind some help with PPing this magazine. Anyone who's interested can drop him a PM.
In the starting block…--(that is, being prepped…)
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; "Intended to include on the best writing and illustrating for children; Our Young folks lived up to its vow during its brief life; Includes "published works by almost every nineteenth-century writer for children, from Sophie May to Harriet Beecher Stowe; it also featured fine engravings, including a handful by Winslow Homer"--Nineteenth-Century American Children & What they Read.
More about this periodical and how it will be posted (3 ways!!??) in the next issue.
However (there's always a "however" isn't there?), this isn't the only periodical 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
We Grow Every Day
We are now up to 410 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 2008 | 2 |
| Q2 2008 | 63 |
| Q1 2008 | 106 |
| 2007 total | 237 |
| Total to date | 410 |
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.
Completed 10,000 pages in a round:
- rolands in P3
- uwe-joachim in F2
- Team German in F2
- Team USA in P3
Completed 5,000 pages in a round:
- yajeulb in F1
- hugger1935 in F2
- Team Canada in P1, P2 and F1
Great work, people!!!
Proofing & Formatting Stats
We've finished with June and it seems that P1 was able to keep both P2 and P3 from the top spot. Great work, guys.
It seems that P1 wants to repeat last month's stats: they are already off to a good start with F2 nipping at their heels this time [though to be precise, percentage-wise, F2 is in the lead--that is, based on their page goals for the month]. We've only just started July--there's still almost 4 weeks to go--anything is possible.
| Round | P1 | P2 | P3 | F1 | F2 |
| July goal | 3,100 | 3,100 | 2,325 | 3,100 | 2,325 |
| *July to date | 567 | 372 | 277 | 424 | 545 |
| July to date % | 18.29 % | 12.00 % | 11.91 % | 13.68 % | 23.44 % |
| June goal | 3,000 | 3,000 | 2,250 | 3,000 | 2,250 |
| June final | 4,125 | 3,810 | 2,864 | 3,265 | 2,052 |
| June final % | 137.50 % | 127.00 % | 127.29 % | 108.83 % | 91.20 % |
*Numbers accurate to "press" time.
For more statistics and related links go to: Statistics Central.
Books In Process And/or Posted To PGC
At press time, we had 60 Gold Star books posted to PGC (with 6 in PPV). Fantastic work, all.
There are currently 61 Silver Star projects in post processing and 94 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 have 16 teams; but 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....
