archive of "Simon's Script" articles

[Simple Simon]

This forum topic is a "home" for the past articles that appeared in "Simon's Script", so we can keep track of what was said, and discuss either the articles' content, or possible subjects you'd like to see in future.

Cheers

Simon

[rfrank]

Today, we officially "launch" Faded Page!!! Enough features have been added to declare the website functional and useful for our intended audience-book readers everywhere.

Of course, we'll be adding much more content over the next few months-there are hundreds of eBooks from DPC waiting to be "converted" and catalogued. And, as our Teams grow, we'll be striking out to harvest and add eBooks from other sources, and a number of new features.

Please join our site, and explore how you could help us grow both the collection and the functionality of Faded Page. We need your help. For example, you could even get active in the forums and tell us how the site could be made more useful to you. Developer time is at a premium right now, but we certainly need great ideas, and I'll report back on a few so all of you can react, and help set priorities.

The difference between Faded Page and other book archives is that we intend to be easy to use, highly effective for the reader, and to increase our visibility. Please tell us how to do this.

Cheers,
Simple Simon
May 11,2012

[rfrank]

May 25 2012--In response to a member suggestion, "Simon's Script" now has a dateline--we'll try always to be as responsive when you make good suggestions about change to FP. And, it's also linked to a forum where past articles are archived for future reference.

We've made some steady progress in the past two weeks. More eBooks have been posted, and we've tested the posting and cataloguing utilities thoroughly. Miscia and I are working at reducing the DPC "waiting to be PPVed" queue, and posting to FP is almost immediate, once we've finished a book. Essentially, the only delay time is the need to update the database.

Now that that's underway, I'm going to split my time a little, so that I can gradually catch up on posting all the books that have been sent to PGC for posting (sometimes long ago), but never been posted there, for one reason or another. Some were just not high priority, others were seen as having copyright difficulties, especially with illustrator DODs.

DPC and FP are not as "stiff" about interpreting the Canadian copyright rules as PGC. This means that we are a little more lenient in accepting sources of information for Date of Death evidence. We accept any reasonable source of information, not just universities, museums, archives and governments, plus published death notices.

You can find a spreadsheet containing the "cleared" authors, and their DOD information, at this site

[rfrank]

June 16 2012--We achieved our first (minor) milestone--the 100th eBook was posted to FP today.

On a completely different note, I've made a mistake (it does happen very occasionally). When I started the initial teams for FP, I named one of them the "Conversion Team", and I've realized that this has misled some members.

The intent of this team was to encourage the harvesting of eBook from other archives, together with whatever "conversion" work was necessary to make them compatible with FP. I think folks have read it as more a push in the direction of "converting" standard eBooks to epub or other formats suitable for mobile and small-format devices. Of course, we want to do that too.

So, I'm going to create a new team, called the Harvesting Team, to do the following:

1. look over all the other eBook archives (maybe track down some lesser known ones, too)
2. identify eBooks that were written by authors who are in Canada's public domain (I'll help)
3. ensure that decent quality text and HTML versions exist (not just semi-automatic transcriptions of the text)
4. for example, one very viable combination would be harvested from PG-US, originally produced by DP-US, has a full HTML version including illos.

So, who is interested in getting involved in this very valuable task? it can produce "new" eBooks for FP with only a fraction of the work need to start from scratch.

[rfrank]

July 4 2012--More information about harvesting. This is an activity that I'd like to see get started as soon as possible, because we will eventually "catch up" on the posting of both new and previously-completed books from Distributed Proofreaders Canada. I estimate we'll get all the backlogged material posted by early September, and the Posting group will be able to keep up easily after that.

That could bring us to approximately 800 books on FP. But we need to go much further than that to be an attractive eBook archive. While there are several ways to proceed, I think we should concentrate on the one that will "pay off" with the most results, harvesting eBooks from PG-US that are public domain in Canada. My guesstimate is that over 8,000 eBooks could be harvested this way.

You have lots of choices, but I've outlined a procedure that could be followed in the forum thread.

When you are satisfied with the way your harvested eBook looks, zip up both the original downloads, and your modified versions, plus your list of changes you made, and place the zip in my dpscans folder under FPharvesting. The first time you do this, I'll go over it carefully and discuss the results with you. Once we get into the swing of things, you'll become a qualified "harvester", and your conversions will receive only a light once-over before being posted.

I'd really appreciate it if a few of the FP members could step up here and help get harvesting procedures tried and tested, so we can build the Harvesting Team and our expansion program.

[rfrank]

Sept 21 2012--This month’s Featured Text is part of the output of our program to harvest eBooks from other respected archives—in this case PG-US. While, of course, we plan to publish every DPC eBook here, eventually the largest number of entries in our catalogue will arrive via “harvesting”.

We estimate that FP’s collection of public domain eBooks in Canada could grow to many thousands. A large part of these will come from PG-US, and while many of those will have been produced through DP-US, many others will be “solo” projects. “The Bride of the Nile” is an example of such a project, having been scanned, proofed and produced by David Widger in 2009.

Now our own colleague from DPC, woodie4, has taken the next step. He downloaded the files, examined them carefully, and did some extensive additions, particularly to the HTML version. He added an image of the beautiful cover of the book, cleaned up the HTML code, and re-organized the footnotes, removing them from “in-line” to the end of the book and linking them to the text locations.

While not all harvested eBooks will require as much remedial work as this one, we must remain on the alert for opportunities to bring them up to our standards. In fact, some members may find this remedial work both the biggest challenge of harvesting, and the most fun—adding life to an eBook is very rewarding, and there are many opportunities. I’ll bring you another example of woodie’s work next month, with a book where he returned to the original TIA scans and “rescued” all of the illos, which had been omitted from the PG-US eBook. In a sense, this is the heart of DPC’s “match the scan” philosophy, in that we strive to preserve the eBooks in a form that is as close to the author’s original intent as possible.

[rfrank]

December 29 2012--Early this month, on December 1st, our sister site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada, passed a significant milestone--its 5th Anniversary since founding. And, at the same time, DPC posted its "1000th book posted" mark.

Eventually, all of the eBooks produced by DPC will be posted to Faded Page. The newly-completed books are posted as they are finished, and a special program to "catch up" on eBooks previously posted to Project Gutenberg Canada will be started in January.

To complete the picture, FP will begin a program of "harvesting" eBooks from other respected eBook archives early in 2013--this will eventually have the effect of growing FP's collection to many thousands of entries.

In other news, members of FP and DPC have an opportunity to influence the design of the site very substantially. When the site was launched, I assumed that a community of interested readers/users would grow up, who would want to discuss books, suggest new additions, contribute book reviews or summaries, provide author biographies and bibliographies, and so on.

To get something started along these lines, I have pulled together a bibliography for William Faulkner, one of the authors who will become public domain in Canada on January 1st, 2013. You'll find it under the "Featured Text" article on this page.

Such a bibliography could be used to locate and process the books of a newly-available author systematically, during the year he became public domain. Of course, it may also be the basis of a reading list for someone who is obsessive about his writings.

Cheers

Simon

[rfrank]

February 12 2013--Here is some information about another part of our
rapidly-growing eBook world--"Read an eBook Week". The site with all
the detailed information is here:

http://www.ebookweek.com/index.html

...and the operation is run by another Canadian, Rita Toews, from
Manitoba. They've been going since 2004, and the connections and
linkages are growing rapidly. Rita has placed an article about DPC on
their front page, and a link to Faded Page on the "Deals and Steals"
page.

Please check out the wealth of information about e-readers and
eBooks on this site, and don't forget to actually "Read an eBook" in
that week.



Cheers

Simon