March 14, 2008
From DPCanadaWiki
Issue #7--March 14, 2008
(Full listing of previous issues is available at DPC Newsletters)
Tagline Entries
Well, we now have some entries for our potential tagline:
"Building a bridge from yesterday to tomorrow; One page at a time."; "DP: Recycling Dead Trees Into Living Text."; "DPC and PGC are preserving Canada's written works: The proof is in the reading."; "DPC's Beavers: Building e-books one bit at a bite."; "Distributed Proofreaders: because nothing deserves to be out of print."; "Distributed Proofreaders: turning a picture into a thousand words."
The last two were originally from DP-Int, but since people commented on them, I added them.
Please see the following thread to vote: http://pgdpcanada.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=3709#3709 I will provide the results next issue. Thanks to all who commented and/or provided suggestions.
Editorial
Now to choose our tagline ... please vote for your favourite. See link above.
Revisions to the Proofing Guidelines--Those revisions are coming along; slowly but surely. Simple Simon advises that the "draft" of the Guidelines in Wiki format should be ready by next Wednesday (March 19). He plans to open it up for comments and suggestions from both newbies and experienced DPCers via an invitation in the Documentation Forum at that time.
Storage Space--This should be resolved by next Monday (March 17) and then the CPers can "go wild" uploading their offerings to PMs.
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.
DPC Site Operation Responsibilities
A simple, basic name for many very important jobs. DPC is getting "bigger": more members and more projects and because of that we need more "admin volunteers" to assist our Site Admins (Simple Simon and coachmike) so that things will continue to run smoothly. There are potential jobs such as Forum Administrators, Project Facilitators, various Coordinators (dphelp, PPV, P3 quals, F2 quals; we do have a BEGIN Coordinator in rfrank), System Admins, Squirrels (or should we call them "Beavers"?), db-req Admins, etc. Anyone who has been involved with DP-Int and/or DP-Eur knows about the importance of these volunteers.
Simple Simon is putting out an invitation for volunteers (or nominees) who have additional time to get involved with the various admin tasks. Send him a pm if you are interested or even if you'd just like more information on the responsibilities of a particular position.
Also, any suggestions as to how members (individually or in general) could pick up part of the burden of running the site are also very welcome.
Featured Book
The Little Quaker; or, The Triumph of Virtue and The Little Prisoner by Susana Moodie, is a children's book based on religion and moral retribution. It is believed to have been written in the early 1820s and orignal copies are hard to come by, although later reprints are available.
The lessons to be learned are relevant still, and, as part of the PG-Canada collection, the story has been preserved for retelling to children for many years to come. HTML link: http://www.gutenberg.ca/ebooks/moodie-quaker/moodie-quaker-00-h-dir/moodie-quaker-00-h.html
Although "The Little Quaker" was written while Moodie was in her teens and living in England, it was chosen to be one of the earlier titles to be processed by DP-Canada because of the literary importance of Moodie's Canadian works.
Moodie and her sister Catharine Parr Traill are both regarded as two of Canada's most important 19th-century writers. They emigrated with their husbands from England in the early 1830s to the area now occupied by Ontario. Moodie's later and more renowned written works, "Roughing It in the Bush", "Life in the Backwoods; A Sequel to Roughing It in the Bush" and "Life in the Clearings Versus the Bush", are based on her experiences of life as a settler.
Continuing the morally instructive theme of "The Little Quaker" in these later works, Moodie wrote in "Roughing It in the Bush":
"Large parties given to very young children ... foster the passions of vanity and envy, and produce a love of dress and display which is very repulsive in the character of a child."
To download or read online, go to http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/4389 .
jjz
The Reason I became a DP volunteer
by Warmheart
In late 2006, I was working on a paper for my University course. I was doing research and came across the Project Gutenberg site with one of the references I needed to complete my assignment.
A curious person by nature and a love of books prompted me to look further into the site. Web pages are almost as bad as footnotes, meaning that one page can lead to another more interesting and so on, and so on. Lo and behold I found the link "How you can help". I clicked on the link which brought me to Distributed Proofreaders and the rest, as they say, is History.
I always have had a great love of reading. Even in High School, my best English scores were when we had to do a book report, with the exception of Shakespeare. Not that I didn't enjoy it, I just didn't think that to enjoy a book you had to analyze every blade of grass or cloud in the sky.
I have always encouraged (okay, pushed) my children to read and they too now enjoy the love of reading. When I found the opportunity to preserve not only the "written" word, but essence of the authors' words it was almost a dream come true. Like some, I quickly became addicted. How many P1 pages have I done? How far up/down did I go in the stats? Did I make any/many errors?
Once again cruising around, I happened upon the "sign up for newsletters" and found **TA-DA** a link stating that PGCanada.ca will be up and running on July 1st. I had to check it out (being the slightly obsessive type) and contacted the esteemed Mark Akrigg asking to help to which he was pleased and set me to work right away! "Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics" [1] was born.
I love the concept of preservation of History and Literature which of course are the goals at both DP-INT and DPC. I keep coming back because of the same reasons. I have also developed some good friendships and at times probably upset a few (unintentionally) others. I will keep proofreading, formatting, PPing and recently CPing for as long as I am able. I find it enjoyable, relaxing, fun and best of all I learn new things (almost every day--something new!)
Project “adoptions”
Are you a CPer who has projects but no one to PM? Are you a PM (or potential PM) and nothing to PM? Well, look no further than the "Projects looking for a PM" thread in the Managing Projects forum.
Projects looking for a PM thread can be found here: http://pgdpcanada.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=350 .... Several projects have already been made available, and more are coming. Typically, the project should be copyright-cleared, scans completed, and OCR work done. So, as a CPer, if you have something to offer, please leave a post. If you are a PM looking for a project,send a pm to the CPer or leave a post in the thread that you are interested.
ÜberProject #1: Chronicles of Canada
Lots has been going on since the last newsletter--we now have a small, but very busy group of people who are prepping the volumes for proofing and formatting. Don't worry, you won't be overwhelmed with the volumes; they have promised to only add a new volume every few weeks or so. Proofers and formatters are needed to work on other projects as well.
There are still 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.
ÜberProject #2: Jesuit Relations
We've started our test volume (Vol. 65: Lower Canada, Mississippi Valley, 1696-1702); it's currently in P2. Simple Simon is the PM and may PP as well. There were some very interesting posts in the discussion forum mostly about how to proof the various non-standard characters. 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.
Potential ÜberProject #3: Governor General's Award Books
Warmheart has created an ÜberProject page for this potential 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....
ÜberProject #4: Periodicals
There has been good early response to the "test" periodical working its way through the rounds, so this will become our ÜberProject #4 starting sometime in April. Suggestions for favourite OLD periodicals are invited--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
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.
Calling all artists and wannabe artists: Simple Simon has suggested a mascot for the newsletter and I thought, why not a mascot that can be used for the DPC site as well? 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. I've set up a folder on DPC's dpscans folder called "DPC_logos". We'll announce the deadline for the logos in March.
If you do not know how to access dpscans:
- You'll need to use an FTP program.
- Address: ftp.pgdpcanada.net; Account: dpscans; Password: has been changed; pm either Simple Simon or Quill if you do not know it.
- You'll see a "home" directory/folder--double click that and you'll see "dpscans".
- Double click on dpscans and you'll see a listing of directories; scroll down to "DPC logos" and then drag and drop your image file(s) to that directory.
- You're done; so just disconnect from the ftp server.
If you do not already have an FTP program, you can try FileZilla (which a number of other DPers use since IE7 won't work): http://filezilla-project.org/download.php. Click on the version that you want (.exe or .zip). The .exe will give an immediate install. It's has a quite intuitive user interface; but if you've questions you can send either Simple Simon or Quill a pm for further help. Or if you're still not sure about doing the upload, you can send a pm to either Simple Simon or Quill and we'll arrange for getting the files from you and you'll still be anonymous.
We Grow Every Day
We are now up to 328 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 | |
|---|---|
| March 2008 | 10 |
| February 2008 | 23 |
| January 2008 | 58 |
| December 2007 | 142 |
| to Nov. 30, 2007 | 95 |
| Total to date | 328 |
Proofing & Formatting Stats
Goals for P1, P2 and F1 remain at 100 pages per day for 3,100 pages for the month. P3 and F2 page goals have been set to 75 pages per day for 2,325 pages for the month. The goals for P3 and F2 were reduced to reflect the fact that they have fewer total pages available. That will give them a much better chance to reach their goals each month. After all, it's a much better feeling to see how much beyond the goal you can get rather than to struggle to even get to the goal.
Looks like F1 wants to beat everyone else this month: 107% and we're not quite half-way through the month. 'FANTASTIC!!!' P3 is following closely at 101% followed by P1 at 82%, P2 at 79% and F2 is over their halfway mark at 56%. At this rate everyone will exceed their page goals for this month. Great going, guys.
| Round | P1 | P2 | P3 | F1 | F2 |
| March goal | 3,100 | 3,100 | 2,325 | 3,100 | 2,325 |
| *March to date | 2,561 | 2,459 | 2,347 | 3,316 | 1,312 |
| March % | 82.61 % | 79.32 % | 100.95 % | 106.97 % | 56.43 % |
| February goal | 2,900 | 2,900 | 2,900 | 2,900 | 2,900 |
| **February final | 8,858 | 6,517 | 3,654 | 3,357 | 1,574 |
| February final % | 305.45 % | 224.72 % | 126.00 % | 115.76 % | 54.27 % |
*Numbers accurate to "press" time.
*Numbers may be out a page or two.
For more statistics and related links go to: Statistics Central.
Books In Process And/or Posted To PGC
At press time, we had 34 Gold Star books posted to PGC (with 2 in PPV). Fantastic work, all; and many thanks to the PPVers who got them through.
There are currently 21 Silver Star projects in post processing and 65 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 15 teams.
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....
