| Rank | Title | Author | Genre | Language | Number of requests |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Latin for Beginners | Benjamin L. D’ooge | Linguistics | English with Latin | 57 |
| 2 | Amusements in Mathematics | Dudeney, Henry Ernest (1857-1930) | Recreation | English | 54 |
| 3 | Mrs. Beeton’s Household Management | Isabella Beeton | Non-Fiction | English | 40 |
| 4 | Myths of Babylonia and Assyria | Mackenzie, Donald Alexander | Non-Fiction | English | 28 |
| 5 | The mysteries of Free Masonry | Morgan, William | Non-Fiction | English | 28 |
Yeah, but what does it mean?
To begin with, these are books that the Distributed Proofreaders worked on, and that they then requested themselves. How does that work?
When Distributed Proofreaders work on a book, and see something they like, they can request to be notified once the book gets released to Project Gutenberg. The site then sends them an e-mail, saying: your book is ready. As you can see, the proofreaders prefer mysteries.
I use this feature a lot while I am proofreading, when I figure I might actually like to read a book in its entirety. In the olden days, before Distributed Proofreader’s 2002 Slashdotting, it was often possible to work on an entire book in a row; but after that time, sometimes you were lucky if you could manage to get hold of a single page. And so this new-fangled system tells the proofreaders: like what you see? sign up here!
Now you know what I told you, but still not what it means. Why is a Latin text book number one for the proofreaders? (Why, because it helps them to proofread these nasty Latin fragments that are scattered across 19th century literature, of course! At least, that’s my best guess.)
Clap, clap. What a useful post, Branko. Thanks for taking us behind the scenes at DP. – David