June 20, 2008
From DPCanadaWiki
Issue #14--June 20, 2008
(Full listing of previous issues is available at DPC Newsletters)
Featured Book Review
Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers
I am a long time fan of Ms. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey books and when I had a chance to PM this one, I didn’t hesitate to say “yes”. This book introduced Lord Peter to the world and is the first of a dozen novels and about 20 short stories that she wrote about him.
Lord Peter is an aristocrat whose hobby is solving mysteries; in particular, murders. Normally, police departments take a dim view of “civilians” participating in such detective work; however, Lord Peter has a close friend (soon to be brother-in-law) who is a Scotland Yard Inspector and so has an “in”. I like Lord Peter because Ms. Sayers made him “real” with the average person’s weaknesses and flaws.
This story starts with the discovery of a naked man (wearing only a pince-nez) in a stranger’s bath tub. [The original story plot was for the discovery of a naked woman found dead in her own bath (wearing only a pince-nez), but Ms. Sayers changed both the gender and the location of the body.] Eventually, after tracking down many leads both false and good, Lord Peter and Inspector Parker discover the identity of the body and then that of the murderer. I’ll let you have the enjoyment of the chase and the discoveries. Here is the PG Canada link for the HTML version: http://www.gutenberg.ca/ebooks/sayers-whose/sayers-whose-00-h.html
Two other “Lord Peter” books have made it through (or almost through) the DPC rounds and I soon hope to have a fourth one ready to go.
IonaV
Editorial
DPC 6-month Birthday--Simple Simon and coachmike began last summer setting up the computer system for DPC and on December 1, 2007, DPC was officially launched; so June 1, 2008, was our 6-month "birthday". To June 1, we had 393 members, posted 52 books to PG Canada, created about 245 projects, and proofed and formatted over 148,000 pages. Pretty good for 6 months, don't you think?
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 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.
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.
Simon Says...
Congratulations to Project Gutenberg Canada on its First Birthday!!
Project Gutenberg has long been a champion of preserving literary treasures and making them widely available, so the reading public can access them without cost or restraint. Of course, the DP community helps by finding books buried in libraries and creating e-books from them in a highly effective way.
One year ago, the PG movement spread to Canada, with the establishment of PG Canada by Mark Akrigg on July 1, 2007. Since that time PGC has made a real inroad into establishing free and open access to the invaluable written heritage of our country.
PGC has posted 131 books to its website at http://gutenberg.ca/, drawing help from individual contributors, cross-postings from other e-book archives, and the DP community. And a great deal of helpful commentary and cataloguing has also been added.
Mark does a great job in helping Content Providers and Project Managers to locate interesting material, often doing the scanning and other “prep” work himself. And when the book is ready for posting, he frequently does additional research, often of the most arcane kinds, such as tracking down the DOD of an illustrator, to ensure the book is truly and undeniably in the Public Domain.
Of course, once DP Canada began to operate, it quickly became the main source of e-books for PGC, and has now contributed over 50 e-book postings, ranging from light fiction of the post 1922 era to highly significant tomes from Canada’s past, bringing all aspects of our heritage to the Canadian reading public.
We at DPC look forward to continuing our close cooperation with PGC, as it moves into its second year of operation.
Puzzles, Mind Games, Conundrums....
Simple Simon says that he is a puzzle nut; lots of people are (including yours truly the editor of this newsletter). Of course, the kinds of puzzles I like probably vary greatly from what others like. He has provided a little logic puzzle for us to solve or try to anyway. Submit your solutions to Quill before the next newsletter comes out July 4 (that's 2 whole weeks, people). We'll provide the solution next issue (July 4) and the best of the solutions/ideas submitted will be acknowledged.
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?
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; but he’s about ready to go ahead with his draft so if you’ve got any last minute ideas, please let him know PDQ. And don't forget about those things that annoy you--those are very important, too. After all, they can't be revised if we don't know that they are annoying....
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 had discussions with some of our members about translating Proofing Guidelines wiki page into other languages. All that’s necessary is the translation--we can put them into wiki page format. If you were waiting for them to be finalized so that you could start translating...well, the Proofing Guidelines are ready and waiting for you....
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 F1: 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 is a New Project. Volume 27 is being prepped for proofing. Volume 5 is in Post-Processing.
- There is one volume (20) in the PP pool waiting for someone to pick it up. 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 test volume (Vol. 65: Lower Canada, Mississippi Valley, 1696-1702) for just over 4 months now; it's currently in P2. 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 decided to get another volume though hasn't decided which one yet.
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....
Three Came to Ville Marie by Alan Sullivan and which won the GG Award for fiction in 1941 was posted to PGC on May 4, 2008. The HTML version is here: http://www.gutenberg.ca/ebooks/sullivan-three/sullivan-three-00-h-dir/sullivan-three-00-h.html
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 3 volumes currently undergoing proofing and/or formatting: one each in rounds P1, P3 and F2. The 4th volume is now waiting in the wings....
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 405 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 | |
|---|---|
| June 2008 | 12 |
| May 2008 | 23 |
| April 2008 | 27 |
| Q1 2008 | 106 |
| 2007 total | 237 |
| Total to date | 405 |
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
Completed 5,000 pages in a round:
- yajeulb in F1
- hugger1935 in F2
Great work, people!!!
Proofing & Formatting Stats
Well, we're two-thirds of the way through June and P1 is still in the lead with P2 keeping right up next to them; there's just 10 days to go and anything can happen. However, P1 and P2 will most definitely make their goals this month--unless they decide to take some long naps.... :wink: :lol:
| Round | P1 | P2 | P3 | F1 | F2 |
| June goal | 3,000 | 3,000 | 2,250 | 3,000 | 2,250 |
| *June to date | 2,861 | 2,722 | 1,460 | 1,537 | 1,209 |
| June to date % | 95.37 % | 90.73 % | 64.89 % | 51.23 % | 53.73 % |
*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 57 Gold Star books posted to PGC (with 7 in PPV). Fantastic work, all.
There are currently 60 Silver Star projects in post processing and 88 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....
