(This article announces the launch of the Digital Text Community, a new mailing list for serious discussion on the digitization of “ink-on-paper” texts, such as books, periodicals, documents, etc. Please join our community!)
Like many of you, I daily follow and contribute to dozens of blogs, mailing lists and forums to keep abreast of digital publication related news, opinions, and developments.
David Rothman should be happy to know that the TeleRead blog is the first place I go to every day to stay up-to-the-minute on digital publishing news and views.
Considering the vast number of blogs, mailing lists, and forums on the Internet, one wonders if there’s any topic which is not somehow covered in some way, including topics in digital publishing.
“Digital Text Community” launched
Recently, it became clear that for one topic, the digitization of “ink-on-paper” texts, there indeed was a void. Certainly there are discussion forums associated with specific projects to digitize texts (e.g., Project Gutenberg and Distributed Proofreaders.) However, these forums tend to be for in-house project planning and not intended to be neutral meeting places for the many independent projects (both non-profit and commercial) which are digitizing “ink-on-paper” texts. (Yes, Martha, there’s a LOT more going on than just Project Gutenberg and Distributed Proofreaders!)
So, whenever there’s a vacuum, eventually something will fill it. So last month I launched the Digital Text Community, a mailing list for the serious discussion of all the wide-ranging issues and topics related to the digitization of “ink-on-paper” texts, such as books, periodicals, documents, etc. Anyone may subscribe and contribute to discussion, and you are invited to join (instructions are given at the end of this article — you need not obtain a Yahoo account to join.)
Already we have almost 200 subscribers and growing fast, and substantive discussion is now beginning to pick up (this is pretty good considering our group is new and the holiday season is a low point for most discussion forums.) The subscriber list reads as a who’s who of those involved with digitizing texts. Is your text digitization project or company (whether large, small or one-person) subscribed to DTC? If not, we hope you decide to join and contribute. (This group is not intended to be an advertising venue but rather a place for information exchange of those interested in text digitization.)
For further information on what the group is all about, read the group’s Description, as well as page through the messages already posted. But note that the allowed topics are quite broad, so don’t let the so-far discussed topics limit your view as to what is allowed to be discussed.
How to subscribe to Digital Text Community
The preferred way to subscribe is visit the group’s home page and click on the “Join This Group!” button in the upper right, and follow the instructions. Joining this way gives you access to the group’s online resources.
If you’d rather not go through the process of subscribing yourself (which involves having a Yahoo account), and only care about receiving and posting messages, then I can manually subscribe you to the group without you having to get a Yahoo account. (Email your join request to me, jon [at] noring.name. Give me the email address you will use.)
The downside to me manually adding you to the group is that you cannot access the group’s online resources. But you can change that at any time by resubscribing yourself with a Yahoo account.
We look forward to seeing you on the Digital Text Community!
