http://www.pearl-repro.co.uk
http://www.4document-scanning.co.uk
http://www.forms-data-capture.co.uk
http://www.microfiche-microfilm-scanning.co.uk

I agree that among the huge corpus of “non-canon” public domain books (in whatever language), there are a significant number which are truly gems that people should know about, and should warrant special digital mastering. They should be added to the “canon.”

Two further comments on this point:

1. The proposed “Digital Text Masters” will not etch in stone the “canon”, but rather will be quite flexible as to what works it encompasses. The emphasis, though, especially in the early years, will be on those public domain books oft-used in education (both K-12 and post-secondary) and regarded by experts and lay enthusiasts to represent the best or the most influential of the public domain.

   If someone believes a particular book should be added to the DTM collection, when it might otherwise not be considered, they may make their case. If they are willing to share in some of the costs (if any) and human effort of the digital mastering, they may get the go-ahead to include that book in the DTM collection. The details of the whole selection process still need to be shaken out, and will probably evolve over time.

2. Once DTM is established and most of the bugs shaken out of it, DTM can certainly diversify into other books and periodicals that make sense to digitize to DTM quality and for inclusion in the DTM database/archive. It’s hard to know the future, really, but we should definitely be ready to diversify. I have some ideas, but they are still nascent so I won’t describe them here.

Finally, DTM is not intended to replace Distributed Proofreaders, which we fully support in its task to digitize the large number of public domain books without regard to “canon.” In fact, I see some sort of working relationship develop between the two organizations (even if DTM proofing ends up not using DP or its system), and with PG which appears to be evolving to a general text archive from many sources.

For example, since DTM is intended to be a formal, more heavily-funded organization (while DP will necessarily always be more of a grassroots, volunteer-driven group even though it does have 501c3 status), I see DTM advancing the various technologies which could be shared with DP and with PG. So in some respects DTM might become the “technology development” arm of the large, multi-organizational community to digitize the public domain texts.

Something to think about, at least. If DTM becomes as successful at generating sustaining revenue as I believe it can, I envision DTM donating funds to DP and PG, preferably in a matching donation sense in order to spur others to donate to those organizations.

Well, I am getting well ahead of myself, since we haven’t yet organized, have no funds, nor produced anything! But I wanted to share how I see DTM relate to DP and PG, and of course to share some long-term goals should DTM get launched.

If nothing else, this exercise provides one vision of the future of the effort to digitize public domain texts, and it will add to the “public domain idea database” that others may draw from.

A related point I think is important to mention which I haven’t yet:

I observe that the public mindshare these days is on the scanning of public domain texts (which is great to see happen!) The downside of this is that in various quarters this quite public focus on scanning is hiding the advantages to users of having structured digital texts. Even though we know the advantages, we are so far not getting the message out — many see having scanned images plus raw, unproofed OCR text as more than sufficient to use these texts.

I see DTM as helping to get the message out that there’s significant benefit to society to create proofed and structured digital texts of many if not all the public domain works. Focusing on the great classics, though they be few in number compared to the entire corpus of public domain texts, helps in explaining the benefits of structured digital texts. It’s a little tougher when the texts being showcased are really obscure, arcane, and in some cases truly bizarre works. But talk about Mark Twain, or the Brontë sisters, and everyone recognizes them.

Projects like Google Books are changing the playground as well, a tremendous number of books are now becoming available, which means our focus can move from scanning to harvesting and adding value (by proofreading and propper tagging) to what is already available.

Another point where PG is gradually improving is metadata. We now have a working catalog. It would also be very nice to build a working ‘reading room’ application around the correction, where people can read, annotate works, and share these annotations with friends or the community.

For languages other than English, we are where PG was 10 to 20 years ago. For both Dutch and Philippine related works, where I have been very active to grow the collection, we are still not through the canon of literature. That is, if such a thing can be demarcated, I have my reservations on an elitist view of literature, and would just as happy an obscure penny novel. Sometimes, these things can be hidden gems, and sometimes they have rightly been delegated to the realm of obscurity. Especially in developing countries, like the Philippines, works have become very difficult to obtain, due to low printing volumes, low quality paper, two devastating wars, and adverse climate conditions. Similarly, Dutch language literature from what is now Indonesia is extremely difficult to obtain, as they were often printed in low volumes on cheap paper, and very few copies have ever reached Europe.

The current long copyright terms are also very harmful for the promotion of literature. In the time-span between commercial non-profitability and entering the public domain, where they are again free to build upon, works get so far out-dated and out-of-touch with living culture, that they have effectively died… One of PG’s purposes, in my opinion, is reviving such works from oblivion.

We throw words like ‘bowlderized’ around as insults- but has anyone ever read his introduction? Poor Tom did his best, and is treated as the worst. We each fall somewhat shy of others expectations.

Right now, I’m trying to get my head around the Dublin Protocols which, I feel, would solve a lot of these issues. Shall we all, then, stop work on everything, until we know we’re working on the ultimate edition?

At least book burning is easier in this day:

pip *.*/del

Come on: we’re supposed to be the good guys! There’s lots of real enemies. We don’t have to emulate a Canadian Prime Minister, who described his party as like the early settlers who would find themselves attacked by Indians, circle their wagons, and start firing inwards…

We’ll see how this unfolds. Already I’ve gotten a couple private messages from “high placed people” with “well-known organizations”. We’ll see if there’s any legs to these and other inquiries.

No matter what happens, I think the idea of “digital text masters”, no matter how it is implemented, is striking a positive chord with a lot of people. I believe a lot of people do care about the faithfulness and provenance of the public domain texts they read, especially when it is brought to their attention. The typical reaction appears to be “I hadn’t thought about it before, but yeah, maybe I should be more concerned.”

As for redoing old texts — someone commented on it in the forums, but I don’t think there’s been any announcement. I”m not sure what’s been tackled other than Robert Louis Stevenson. We’re doing a multi-volume collection of his complete works.

The question of displaying the images as well as the etext is a vexing one. Many people in DP would like to do so and I understand that we’re holding the scans that we made and we control. However, we’ve done a fair number of books based on borrowed scans from Gallica, Google Books, and other such sites. Pictures of two-dimensional texts or pictures that are out of copyright can’t be copyrighted and if we were to display the “borrowed” pictures, we’d probably be OK but … it seems better not to push it.

I hope that I haven’t gotten myself in hot water here, by seeming to speak for DP. I’ve been volunteering there for four years, but I’m just a foot-soldier, not one of the generals.

And I’ve not heard about the five round system. Does this mean five proofreading rounds? Looking at the DP home page, it still shows only three. One thing that interests me is how accurate is the three proofreading system? That’s one thing I hope DTM will be able to answer.

For others reading this, DP is focused on the production side of the texts. As far a I know they still only donate their work product to PG, and make no other use of the texts. In addition, they have not (as far as I know) instituted an archival scanning requirement or recommendation, although individuals scanning books could do so if they want. (For one book I submitted to them, an original of Burton’s Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana which still needs to be proofed, the scans were done at archival quality and then downsampled to meet DP’s preferences.)

I’ve even toyed for a while with the idea of starting a “Distributed Scanners” group (which could still be launched to support the “Digital Text Masters” project) — just find a bunch of persnickety people (maybe with a touch of obsessive-compulsiveness to assure things are done right <laugh/>) with suitable scanners (e.g., high-grade sheet feed scanners and the Plustek OpticBook) and steer them to scan the great classics according to a set of requirements and guidelines. DS would, of course, build a database for archiving the scan sets along with donating copies of the originals to the Internet Archive (the scan sets, at archival quality, will take up a lot of space, like five or more gigs per book, but with terabyte drives getting dirt cheap, and burning DVD’s also getting cheap, space is no longer an issue.)

So our vision for DTM, should it get launched, is much more comprehensive and wide-ranging. It certainly could take advantage of the DP system and if DP wants to be involved. (I don’t want to be presumptuous here — Juliet will understandably require that there be meat and real potential in the DTM proposal for her to commit any official DP mindshare to it.) A copy would go to PG, which is important, and we would get a copy as well. DTM would, of course, take the lead in securing the archival-quality and QC’d scans.

And DTM would work to start building the text annotation project (either alone, or preferably as part of David Rothman’s LibraryCity venture should he succeed at getting that funded in time) — important to make the texts much more useful in the educational market. Btw, since DTM will probably do a similar approach to mastering as what DP will do in the future with PGTEI, I see the works done by DP, which DTM won’t do, to augment the DTM works in the database we set up — again more synergies between the projects.

Since DP and PG are closely linked, PG will benefit from this as well. DTM is not intended to compete, but to complement PG and DP, and possibly open up doors the other projects will have more difficulty in opening. Visualize the association as a Venn diagram, with three circles intersecting with each other — DTM will have some of its circle outside of the others. The result is that the projects in toto will cover a bigger area.

I should think that DP would want to participate in the project. We already have the infrastructure and now, a five round system that is producing extremely high-quality works. Indeed, a Dickens novel would be a welcome break from working on The Diseases of the Horse and other such odd works meandering through the system.

We aren’t limited to offering works to PG, so far as I know. I would guess that TPTB would want to make any results available both to you and to PG. But that’s just a guess.

I can’t speak for TPTB. However, you shouldn’t fear to approach them.