LibriVox Forum

Distributed Proofreaders is celebrating their 20th Anniversary on October 1st!

Who is DP? Well, they are a group of volunteers from around the world (sound familiar?) who convert public domain books into e-books, primarily for Project Gutenberg. By the time you download a book to read from PG, each page has been touched by at least 7 volunteers at DP who proofread the OCR scan (3 rounds), format the text (2 rounds) and then convert the files into an e-book.

They have asked LibriVox to collaborate in celebrating their 20th anniversary. One way to do that is by recording a "milestone" project, which DP will feature as part of it's anniversary celebrations.

As a start, we've chosen "Shores of the Polar Sea", which was the 35,000th book completed by DP. Please drop by the project thread and help us read this exciting tale of arctic exploration! viewtopic.php?f=28&t=78195

Please post below if you have other suggestions on how we might contribute to the DP party! We'd love to hear your ideas.

Continuing the preparations for the celebration, I have launched a second commemorative project, PG's 60,000th book! If you can contribute and wishes to read about animals, here it is: viewtopic.php?f=28&t=78220

The "Shores of the Polar Sea" project still has sections to be claimed though, so, if adventure is more your thing, head this way: viewtopic.php?f=28&t=78195

Interesting!
I've taken part in both of these.

Another milestone is The Bird Book by Chester A. Reed http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30000
A good sized book, but certainly possible.

10000 is the Magna Carta, but I can't make sense out of it, although it would be short.

Or, there is a palindrome suitable for 20: Walnut Growing in Oregon http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20202
Short and easy to do.

Or just an interesting number: The Golden Rule Cook Book: Six hundred recipes for meatless dishes http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/55555

I'd be glad to BC any or several of the above it anyone thinks them appropriate.

Just a question out of curiosity- How many projects do we have for the celebration? And are any of those still scrambling to be completed in time?

Thanks,

We have two that will be highlighted by DP in their blog post tomorrow (Polar Seas and Vol 1 of animals). I am not aware of any others that were launched and finished ... but if there is something out there that I'm missing, please let me know.

MaryAnn

I had DPLed 'Animals' and forgot that the project was still waiting to be cataloged till I came across it the other day. I hope someone can also dress them up with covers in time!

EDIT: Don't worry about me. Y'all are doing great, and I saw that the covers have been under consideration for quite some time already!

**Happy Anniversary, DP!!**

Hi all,

In addition to here, I am also a volunteer at DP. To celebrate DP's October 1st anniversary, volunteer Project Managers (PMs) there submitted ebook projects to be worked on (proofreading and formatting) during the month of October that would be identified at Project Gutenberg (PG) to honor DP's anniversary. The DP criteria was that the ebook had to be related to the 20th anniversary in some way, for example:

• Books with "20" in the title

• Books published in 1920, 1820, 1720, etc.

• Books with titles related to 20th anniversary gift themes - porcelain (china), platinum, emerald, aster

I was one of those PMs, submitting Twenty Unsettled Miles in the Northeast Boundary to the team for proofreading and formatting, then I did the post-processing and submission to PG. When I saw this thread, I thought it would be good idea to record the ebook for LibriVox to recognize DP's anniversary. I didn't mention anything, because one never knows how quickly the project would run through DP, my post-processing speed, get posted to PG, and my recording and editing speed.

Well the project ran fairly quickly, and was submitted to PG by the middle of October. Hoping to have the recording and editing done by the end of October was too aggressive for me, but it was submitted and proof-listened here a couple of days ago, as a roughly 45-minute contribution to Short Nonfiction Collection Vol. 078

Just thought this may be of interest to the discussion.

Thank you,

Don (DACsoft). In our Zoom meeting today someone mentioned that sometimes LV audiobooks are linked in Gutenberg to the book itself. Some, but not many. Could you shed any light on how this might be done? And if so, who does it?

Phil,

This was being done for a while a number of years ago, but fell by the wayside for reasons that I don't recall at the moment. There should be a thread somewhere. I'll see if I can find it.

ETA: Here it is viewtopic.php?f=24&t=3813

Hi Phil,

At one time, in addition to books, PG was publishing audio books (some from LibriVox), music and movies, but now limit themselves to books, for at least, IIRC, as long as the 10 years I've been with DP. So you will find these still in their catalog (for completeness). Here's a couple sections pulled from the Frequently Asked Questions about Project Gutenberg.

Does Project Gutenberg publish only books?

Yes.

In the past, Project Gutenberg also published other cultural works like movies and music, but the bulk of our collection is books, and there are other online projects that do a better job with other types of content.

For more details, see the collection development policy.

What other things has Project Gutenberg published in the past?
We have published some music files, in MIDI and MUS formats. We have published the Human Genome. We have published pictures of the prehistoric cave painting from the south of France. We have published some video files and some audio files, including tracks by award-winning singer/songwriter Janis Ian and readings from public domain books.

Now, however, we only publish literary works that were previously published.

And from the Historical Context section of PG's Collection Development Policy referenced in the first quote above:

Project Gutenberg worked with many different content types, including audio books, digitized sheet music, some movies, and quite a few copyrighted items that were donated by contemporary authors. By the early 2000s, it was clear that Project Gutenberg was not as well-suited for those different content types as for public domain literature. There are now many other outlets for these other types of works, including a self-publishing portal for contemporary authors that is operated by a Project Gutenberg affiliate.

Project Gutenberg will not remove or deprecate these previous items. They were all donated and accepted with the best of intentions, and with the understanding that Project Gutenberg would provide for their long-term stewardship and unlimited redistribution. Michael Hart expressed unending gratitude to all the people who contributed content, and who digitized previous works. Project Gutenberg remains grateful to all of its contributors and volunteers.

Finally, Project Gutenberg, in their How to Help section of their main page, has a link to LibriVox for those interested in recording audiobooks.

Hoping this is helpful,

Yes, thank you Don. Great information and answers all my curiosity!

I think it was a good idea not to continue, there is plenty still to do without duplicating another site. Their "prime directive" is making digitized PD books available as text and they do it well.

Anne