Return-Path: <nifl-technology@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id gACDaEX06063; Tue, 12 Nov 2002 08:36:14 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2002 08:36:14 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <A1064140F022D3118EBE0008C791936404572FDA@fegsmail1.fegs.org> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-technology@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-technology@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-technology@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: "Hacker, Emily" <EHacker@fegs.org> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-technology@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-TECHNOLOGY:2660] RE: Distributed Proofreading - help needed X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas Content-Type: text/plain; X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19) Status: O Content-Length: 5595 Lines: 127 Steve, thanks for the information about this worthwhile project. I just completed two pages and, like you, found it satisfying to do this simple and concrete task that will help continue building the Project Gutenberg library of free books. I have made the "Distributed Proofreaders" site my new browser home page, so I'll be reminded in the morning to log-on and do a page before getting immersed in my day. The project is also a good model of Internet-based collaborative work/learning space. I encourage others on the list to check it out. Best, --Emily ************************************************************ Emily Hacker Moderator - NIFL Technology Director, Learning Technologies F.E.G.S (212)366-8122 ehacker@fegs.org -----Original Message----- From: Steve Linberg [mailto:steve@silicongoblin.com] Sent: Monday, November 11, 2002 11:11 PM To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: [NIFL-TECHNOLOGY:2659] Distributed Proofreading - help needed (Note: I sent this to the list last week, but it seems to have gotten eaten by the list processor. Trying again.) ------------------------------------------------------------------- Fellow NIFL-Tech'ers, Want to help save the world by enriching the public domain? You may have heard of Project Gutenberg - one of the heroic jewels of the internet. It's been around for a long time, and its goal is to enrich the public domain by scanning and transcribing books and texts that have become public domain and making them available free, for download. I used them a lot when I was teaching. It's an entirely volunteer effort to help preseve the public domain and make public-domain books accessible to anyone who wants them. I believe copyright law currently protects written work for 70 years, which means anything copyrighted in 1932 or earlier is in the public domain. There are efforts from the publishing industry to change this to "life plus 70", meaning 70 years from the death of the author, not from the date of publication. If this succeeds, we'll see another huge rollback in the public domain, where only books whose AUTHORS died in 1932 or earlier would be eligible, but I digress. It's a huge amount of work to transcribe a book. I've done it. You either type it out by hand, or you scan the book's pages with a scanner and then run them through an OCR program (Optical Character Recognition) that tries to turn the IMAGE of the text into actual text, analyzing the shape of the letters. Depending on the quality of the original, this is usually faster than typing, but still requires heavy proofing. It's very time-consuming and a lot of beginning efforts die on the vine because it's so hard. There's a new project up online that you can join to help the effort to get scanned books proofed. They ask "a page a day" of volunteers. I just joined and did my first page, it took about ten minutes. If you feel, as I do, that a rich public domain is an indispensible cornerstone of any literacy effort, particularly in an era of ever-tightening budgets and programs run on a shoestring, please consider kicking in a few minutes of your time to help. It seems like a really worthy cause, and they've made it VERY easy to contribute. The site is at this address: http://texts01.archive.org/dp This is how it works: you go there and create an account. (You can also read about the project and so forth). With your account you log in immediately, and then you are presented with a list of books in need of proofing. You can pick the one you want to work on (I chose one about copyright authors, a statistical work that's dry but important for the project), but there's also poetry, literature (someone's doing The Iliad, among others), and more. You click "project info and start proofing", read the project manager's notes for that book, and then you're given a scanned page to look at and a text box with the scanned text from the page. You go through and correct the errors as best you can, and then you submit it. That's it! You can also review the pages you've done and go over them again if you want. It also keeps your statistics and you can see how the overall project is doing. Very cool. Personally I really enjoyed the simplicity of being able to do one discrete, tangible bit of good so easily in a time so generally rife with bad news. Cheers, Steve -- Steve Linberg, Chief Goblin Silicon Goblin Technologies http://silicongoblin.com Be kind. Remember, everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. ******************************************************************* Please List Your Job Openings with FEGS at (212)366-8039 If You Are interested in Making a Donation to FEGS to Help Us Continue To Provide Essential Crisis Support Services, please contact Gail Magaliff, COO at (212)366-8551 or send an e-email to gmagaliff@fegs.org PLEASE VISIT OUR WEBSITE AT www.fegs.org ************************NOTE************************************** The information contained in this email message is intended only for use of the addressee(s) named above. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, or the employee or agent responsible to deliver it to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please immediately notify us by tel (212-366-8400), and discard the original message. Thank you for your cooperation. *******************************************************************
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Jan 17 2003 - 14:44:49 EST