May 7, 2010

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The Beaver Bulletin / Le Bulletin du castor


DP Canada: Recycling Dead Trees into Living Text
DP Canada: Nous recyclons les arbres morts pour en faire des textes vivants


Volume 3, Issue #63--May 7, 2010
(Full listing of previous issues is available at DPC Newsletters)


Contents

Simon Says...

Two subjects this issue: The Jesuit Relations and Google.

The Jesuit Relations

I have finally been able to make a good start on the PPing of the first issue of this ÜberProject, and the "prep" work is well under way. As you'll recall, we've had quite a discussion in the Forums about how to handle the unusual and complicated orthography of this major project. We need to deal with the likelihood that both serious scholars and more casual readers of history will be interested in reading the series.

And since we will eventually be making a major investment of time in the many volumes of the series, we need to establish some PPing standards, so as to save some PPing effort as we proceed.

I suggest that we produce four versions of each book, rather than the normal "text + HTML" approach:

1. "scholarly" text, with all the old orthography preserved (using the UTF-8 encoding)

2. "readable" text, with "modern" orthography (using ISO-8859-1 encoding; long s, u/v and i/j changed to the modern versions, and the usual ugly substitutions for weird characters, like the taurus and a few instances of macrons, breves etc). This would meet Mark Akrigg's requirement for an ASCII text version.

3. scholarly HTML

4. readable HTML

In the next day or so, I'll be finished the preliminary "clean-up" on Volume 65, so if anyone has alternative suggestions, I need them right away.

Google: scanning, copyright, and selling books

As you all know, Google has been engaged in an active program to "digitize all books". What they mean by digitize is scan--and we're all familiar with the results, in the form of the scansets they make available, most notably through the Internet Archive. We even harvest them, sometimes.

The overall program is incredibly ambitious--by various estimates, there have been somewhere between 16 and 50 million books created since the beginning of recorded history, and perhaps one third to one half of these are still accessible somewhere. But every time I see this estimate, the current number has risen, and I suspect it will eventually settle in the 100 million range. Of course, we're not talking unique titles here--that included all editions and versions.

Google has taken at least 2 shots at this--the first time, it was the "Million Book Project", which ended in a sort of disaster. Google made a deal with several large libraries to borrow "secondary" copies of many books, shipped them to India by sea in containers (!!!), and had them scanned by well-intentioned folks earning a few dollars a day. The results were predictable--large quantities of trash.

More recently, they've been doing it more professionally, but the results are still mixed. Many scansets are unusable from our point of view--skewed, cut off, keystoned, blurred, covered by fingers etc.--and unreadable from anyone's perspective. Still, there they are.

Of course, they were sued by everyone--publishers, authors, the Authors' Guild, US copyright admin...

And this suit drags on, and probably will not be resolved for at least another year. Settlements and compromises have been tried. But meanwhile, Google soldiers on.

The latest development is that they have announced a "Book Store", called Google Editions, where they will offer digital versions of these books, at fairly low prices. Publishers will also be allowed to sell Google Editions material on their own site, keeping most of the revenue. This is like being allowed to sell your own property, through your own channel, and pay Google part of the revenue, because they illegally scanned your books!!

But fears and even predictions that these developments will "make Gutenberg and DP irrelevant" are, in my opinion, overblown. There will always be a demand for quality products, and, as long as we maintain our quality standards, we'll be performing a service that is needed. Frankly, I find trying to read an "e-book" on TIA or Google that is really just a scanset, or, worse yet, a .PDF version prepared from a Google scanset, frustrating and exhausting. Of course, it is not scalable either, since it is not truly a digital version. So if the book contains very small print, my weary old eyes cannot make out the content. Despite claims of searchability, I don't agree.

And finally, our display site will eventually offer the ultimate end-product. Because we'll use the text version to index the entire HTML version at the word level, the reader will be able to request "all books written in France, but in English, during the 19th century, that contain the word "aardvark", but not the word "revolution". We hope to include what coachmike calls a "two-way relaxable index", which means that, if the above search produces no results, you can choose which search term to eliminate, and the book list resets on the fly--you don't need to search over.

In short--DPers, be of good cheer!!--what we do is useful, nay wonderful, and we'll do even more miraculous things in future.


April--New forum topics

Do you ever check the DPC Forums Index to see if there are any new topics that might be of interest to you?... I'm not talking about project discussion forums, but forums related to CPing, PMing, PPing, general topics, even new User Team forums, etc., etc., etc. Have a peek at some of them; maybe you'll find an answer to that question that you haven't gotten around to asking or weren't sure if you could or should ask it.... Or maybe you'll find a post that will give you a giggle or two.

In April, we had the following new, interesting, forum threads created:


Special Requests

Attention all CPers (current and potential) and PMs

De2164 is looking for more French language projects.

It also seems that westerns and slightly more contemporary (i.e., less "historical") stories are being snapped up by proofers and foofers. Authors such as Robert Stead, B.M. Bower, Zane Grey, John Buchan, et al have been popular. Although some of these authors do have books that are on PG-Int/US, many books were published after 1922 and, therefore, are not available as scans on TIA or even (sshh...) Google.

If anyone has or knows where to get copies of books that DPC has not yet done (authors like Grey were prolific), we'd love to know. If you are prepared to scan them--but not PM--there are DPCers who would love to get the scans and will do all the prep and PMing. You can start a new discussion thread in the Providing Content" forum or add a post to the I have books discussion thread.

Any available PPers?

We can still use PPers; there are about 90 projects in the queue. Simple Simon is getting the PPV backlog lowered so he'll be looking for more PP'd projects.

Lots of choices depending on what you like:

  • easy, average, hard;
  • history, biography, fiction, humour (or is that "humor" :wink:), folklore, periodicals, science, military and other genres;
  • most are in English, but there are several in Portuguese, one in German, one English with French and one in Spanish (at least at the time of writing);
  • the projects range in size from about 25 pages to over 800;
  • a number of them have illustrations.

If you are interested in learning a new skill, there are several experienced PPers who will give some direction if asked. Lostpaces has offered to mentor new PPers so you are not alone. Check out her forum discussion thread: Would like to PP? Check here


Editorial

Simon advises that he's healthy now and ready to work; he expects to spend, if anything, even more time in future on DPC matters than in the past. In fact, he's planning on "retiring" from his consulting practice over the next few months.

* * * * *

Membership--We're looking good and should be able to welcome our 1,000th member by late summer or early fall ... or maybe even sooner. As an FYI, although DPC's official launch date is December 1, 2007, our first two members--DPCanada and Simple Simon--signed up August 2 & 3, 2007 respectively. Think we can make 1,000 before then? After all, we only need 110 or so more people to register.

So, what do you think we should do in celebration?

* * * * *

Display Site--As mentioned in the Simon Says... for February 26, Simon has set up a forum to discuss the various aspects of the Display Site. Have you seen it yet? What do you think? We want to know.

There have been a few ideas put forward which Simon has gratefully responded to. Are there more ideas or comments?

* * * * *

New and/or recurring articles--Ever thought about providing an article or a paragraph or an idea for the newsletter? That's how new articles and/or series start and continue to appear.

Anytime you have a good idea for the newsletter, please drop Quill a line. You can write such offerings yourself or provide an outline to Quill for further expansion. Don't worry, Quill always edits articles for grammar, punctuation and/or spelling errors so no need to fret about how you've said something. You can remain anonymous if you wish.

Articles about authors or books that you worked on as a CP, PM, proofer, foofer and/or PPer; kudos and compliments, landmarks, quotable quotes, tips or hints that you think will help others, questions, anything related to DPC or PG is welcome. See the list of ideas at the end of the newsletter.

* * * * *

Calling all Proofers--This is a constant request: we do have an ongoing need to get projects into the formatting rounds. Maybe all proofers--especially P3s--could commit to doing a few more pages every week ... F1s don't have many projects to choose from and what they get are quickly dealt with. Foofers can help with proofing, too; especially if you are looking for a change of pace.

* * * * *

PLEASE NOTE--Update--The "new" FAQs and non-English Guidelines that you can access through the FAQ Central page either have been or are being revised to be truly DPC versions.

* * * * *

Formatting Guidelines--Simon advises that he hopes to get these updated and released by mid-May or so. At least, he's certainly going to try. Once that's done, we'll "retire" the older versions of ALL guidelines that are on our site--they cause too much confusion.

* * * * *

Server and site issues--There's still the odd server problem that has continued, but hopefully those will be cleared up once the site code is upgraded. See below for comments about the site code update.

* * * * *

ÜberProjects--see the regular updates below. There's a good possibility that several more of our Chronicles will be posted soon.


Revisions to Guidelines, FAQs and the DPC site code

Guideline Differences--Once we get our Proofreading and Formatting Guidelines updated to go along with our upcoming site code upgrade, we intend to produce a wikipage with the differences. We're working on the Guidelines updates at this time and we hope to produce the "differences" page shortly thereafter.

* * * * *

Guidelines Summaries--IonaV, with the kind assistance of Long Green (aka Mama Beth) as well as stygiania and jjz (P3 and F2 Quals PFs respectively), is updating the Proofreading and Formatting Guidelines Summaries. The ones currently available through our FAQs page are a little out of date considering that some of the rules noted in the summaries are TOTALLY different from what we do!! <<oops>>

* * * * *

Upgraded DPC site code--There have been further delays so we won't see it for some time yet ... but that's life, isn't it. Comments from a recent post (April 21) by Simple Simon: 

 We will "synchronize" our site code with that of DP-INT, but it's proving to be more complicated than we thought. 
 
 All current features of DP-INT, including WordCheck, will be implemented, except possibly a few items that 
 would conflict with the fundamental security design of the DPC servers. (We use VMWare, and a series of 
 "virtual machines" to accomplish our purposes, and this ultra-modern approach requires us to do some tasks 
 in a specific way). 
 
 The plan has been to depend solely on DP-INT and its Squirrels/Developers to keep the site code updated from 
 "synchronization" onwards. But we may have to reconsider this approach. 
 
 We are carefully watching the direction in which site development may go, and all the other proposals out there 
 on the subject of site-redesign. 
 
 These complications, together with our extremely scarce developer resources, are delaying "synchronization" 
 severely.


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 prepping the rest of the volumes. Sufficient PMs have volunteered to handle all remaining volumes--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.
  • Volume 26 is in P1: Available; Volumes 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 19, 21, 25, 31 and 32 are available for, in or completed Post-Processing. There are several in New Project being prepared for the P1: Waiting queue with one or two yet to be prepped.
  • 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, Volumes 13, 17 & 24 are all in F2: Waiting.
  • Ten volumes have been posted to PGC and/or PG-International:
    • 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 3: The Founder of New France, A Chronicle of Champlain,
    • 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 12: The Father of British Canada, A Chronicle of Carleton,
    • Volume 18: The 'Adventures of England on Hudson Bay', A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North,
    • Volume 20: Adventurers of the Far North, A Chronicle of the Arctic Seas,
    • Volume 27: The Winning of Popular Government: A Ahronicle 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

Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France; 1610-1791

Vol. 65: Lower Canada, Mississippi Valley, 1696-1702, is in post processing. Simon advises that he's almost finished the "first" run cleanup on this volume. See his comments and request above.

Vol. 66: Illinois, Louisiana, Iroquois, Lower Canada, 1702-1712, is now in post processing.

Vol. 67: Lower Canada, Abenakis, Louisiana; 1716- 1727 is in P3: Available. Lots of "fun" with strange characters, old style French spellings and accents, bits and pieces of other languages.

Vol. 68: Lower Canada, Crees, Louisiana; 1720-1736 is in P3: Available. Again, lots of "fun" with strange characters, old style French spellings and accents, bits and pieces of other languages.

Vol. 69: All Missions; 1710-1756 is in P2: Available. More of the same strange characters with Latin as well as old French spellings and English.

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

This was the first of our Periodicals ÜberProjects. more details???

Second year-- prep: 6; P1: Waiting: 1; proofing/formatting rounds: 4; post-processing: 1; posted to Project Gutenberg: 0

First year-- post-processing: 1; posted to Project Gutenberg: 11

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.

Volume 3: Warmheart has started to prep the third volume.

Volume 2: prep: 3; P1: Waiting: 3; proofing/formatting rounds: 5; post-processing: 1; posted to Project Gutenberg: 0

Volume 1: post-processing: 10; posted to Project Gutenberg: 2

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 from 1846. The first issue has now been posted. Simon has more being prepped for proofing.

We've started a wiki page for it: http://www.pgdpcanada.net/wiki/index.php/Periodicals/Scientific_American.

The Maple Leaf

This Canadian juvenile periodical was published between 1852 and 1854 for a total of 30 issues. IonaV is PMing and handling the prep. Susan downloaded the scans and will possibly do the PPing.

Volume 1 (6 issues): prep: 5; P1: Waiting: 0; proofing/formatting rounds: 1; post-processing: 0; posted to Project Gutenberg: 0.

A wikipage has been created: http://www.pgdpcanada.net/wiki/index.php/The_Maple_Leaf

"Old Periodicals" Criteria

Remember, these aren't the only periodicals that we can do--there are lots of others out there and some that are quite unique. Is there one that you'd like to do? Suggestions for favourite OLD periodicals are always welcome, but they must meet 3 criteria:

  1. published earlier than 1865 to avoid the need for copyright checking
  2. good quality scans of a reasonable number of issues (preferably in whole volumes of 6-months or a year)
  3. interesting content, out of the ordinary, Canadiana, ...


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 ...

More details and an ÜberProject wiki page to come.


ÜberProject #6: John Graves Simcoe

John Graves Simcoe, Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, and military leader of Canada, and one of the true Canadian "Fathers of Confederation". This is NOT dull history either.

Projects about or by Simcoe in proofing/formatting rounds: 0; post-processing: 2. Three have been posted to PGC.

Simon is soliciting other material by or about Simcoe--do you know of any?


ÜberProject #7: Gilbert (George) Murray

Gilbert Murray lived from 1866-1957. He was quite a prolific writer with some 90 odd titles to his name with 32 of them being translations of Greek dramas.

Status of these projects--post processing: 4; proofing/formatting rounds: 3; P1: Waiting: 1; in prep: 2+.

Miscia has created a wikipage which will be a work in progress naturally: http://www.pgdpcanada.net/wiki/index.php/Gilbert_%28George%29_Murray_%281866-1957%29


ÜberProject #8: Art Latcham Magic Collection

This new ÜberProject should be launched within the next few weeks--Simon had a great progress meeting on April 21, and the presentation to the Stouffville Library Board is on May 8.

All "magic" lovers should get ready. If you know of anyone who likes magic and who are not members of DPC, be sure to let them know about this upcoming ÜberProject.

And if you want to be really involved with the project in some way: prepping, PMing, PPing, managing the ÜberProject wikipage or any of the tasks listed in the Simon Says... article above, just send Simon a PM and let him know.


We Grow Every Day

We are now up to 889 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
May 2010 6
April 2010 26
2010 Q1 62
2009 total 321
2008 total 235
2007 total 239
Total to date 889


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 65,000 pages in a round:

  • no one at present...

Completed 60,000 pages in a round:

  • Foofers' Corner in F2

Completed 55,000 pages in a round:

  • no one at present...

Completed 50,000 pages in a round:

  • no one at present...

Completed 45,000 pages in a round:

  • uwe-joachim in F2

Completed 40,000 pages in a round:

  • Team USA in P3 NEW!!!

Completed 35,000 pages in a round:

  • no one at present...

Completed 30,000 pages in a round:

  • rolands in P3
  • Team Canada in P1 NEW!!!

Completed 25,000 pages in a round:

  • Ex-Pats in F2
  • P3 Pros in P3

Completed 20,000 pages in a round:

  • Foofers' Corner in F1
  • LOTE Flotes my Bote in F2
  • Team Canada in P2

Completed 15,000 pages in a round:

  • P2 Expediters in P3

Completed 10,000 pages in a round:

  • Bibi in P3
  • De2164 in F1
  • hugger1935 in F1
  • rcool in P1 and P2
  • Scribe in F2
  • snowseraph in P2
  • stygiania in P3
  • Team Canada in P3 and F1
  • Team German in F2
  • Team USA in P2 and F2

Completed 5,000 pages in a round:

  • Adair in F1 and F2
  • Antigony in F1
  • cmspence in F2
  • Daniel G in P1
  • Drama Team in P2 and P3
  • gmiller in P2
  • goofball in P1
  • hugger1935 in P1, P2, P3 and F2
  • Infomaniacs in P2 and P3
  • Marmaduke in P3
  • mcbax in P3
  • Miscia in P3
  • Pippin in F1
  • RCEberwein in F1
  • snowseraph in P1
  • stygiania in F2
  • supo88 in P2
  • Warmheart in P2 and F1
  • yajeulb in F1
  • Drama Team in P1, P2, P3 and F1 NEW!!!
  • DPing with Cats in P1, P2 and F1
  • Foofers' Corner in P2 and P3
  • Infomaniacs in P2 and P3
  • P2 Expediters in P2 and F2
  • P3 Pros in F2
  • Team British Columbia in P1, P2, P3 and F2
  • Team Canada in F2
  • Team français in P3
  • Team German in P3 and F1
  • Team Smoothy (aka 'Smoothies') in P2
  • Team UK in P1 and P2
  • Team USA in P1 and F1
  • Weather Reports in F2

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 April:

  • P1 completed over 153,000 pages
  • P2 completed over 142,000 pages
  • P3 completed over 124,000 pages
  • F1 completed over 124,000 pages
  • F2 completed over 118,000 pages

Great work, people!!!


Proofing & Formatting Stats

All rounds have met and exceeded their targets for April--P1 got over 230%!!! while all the other rounds got over 150%. Way to go, people!!!

Now May is 7/31 or 22.6% done; so, let's see ... P1 is definitely on top of their pages :thumbsup: while the other rounds are certainly working hard to keep up. We've got 3½ weeks to go ... lots of time to meet and exceed our targets.

Round P1 P2 P3 F1 F2
May target3,4103,4103,1003,4103,100
*May to date1,2781,281862937658
May to date %37.48%37.57%27.81%27.48%21.23%
April target3,3003,3003,0003,3003,000
April final7,6285,6095,3575,1244,686
April final %231.15%169.96%178.57%155.27%156.20%

*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 342 Gold Star books posted to PGC or PG-Int (with 3 in PPV). Fantastic work, everyone!!

There are currently 353 Silver Star projects in post processing (with 90 waiting for PPers) and 147 Bronze Star projects which are currently undergoing proofing or formatting; there are another 35 waiting in the queue (not including the BEGIN projects). For more details about the posted and/or active projects, please see the listings on the DPC 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 28 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....
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