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Announcing "Distributed Scanners" discussion group (Scanning public domain texts)
[Feel free to redistribute this announcement to other forums where
on-topic, such as scanning, graphics, books and publishing, library and archives, etc. Thanks.] .... Let's digitally scan all the world's public domain books! ... Everyone, Several people privately expressed interest in the "Distributed Scanners" (DistScan) idea I recently outlined to the Book People forum. So, I've taken the next step and created a Yahoo discussion group to further explore this idea -- to see if it has any legs. You are invited to join -- refer to the info at the end of this message.) To summarize the idea: Is there interest and need for a volunteer-driven, large-scale distributed scanning project of public domain books and other documents modeled after (where applicable) Distributed Proofreaders? The full group description, and the current expanded summary of the idea (which will undoubtedly change and improve over time as we better understand the various issues) is given at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/distscan/ To be clear, this group does not actually launch the project, but rather serves only to bring together sharp, like-minded people to explore the idea -- to see if there is a "working formula" that makes sense, and if we can assemble a core group of people with the needed skill sets and interest to be able to successfully launch the project. The goal, of course, is to accelerate the high-quality scanning of public domain texts. It is not intended to be competitive with other projects to scan the public domain, such as those managed by the Internet Archive (e.g. OCA), but rather to augment and possibly even work in cooperative fashion with those projects (including Distributed Proofreaders.) Please read carefully the group description at the above URL. If you wish to comment on this message, I encourage you to join the group and post your comment there. Or, email it to me in private and I may post it to the group (with your identity removed unless requested otherwise). Anyone interested in scanning the public domain (whether a private individual or representing an institution) is invited to participate. We definitely need people with expertise in a very wide range of areas. Since DistScan will likely have many components, you are probably expert in one of them! Do join and contribute to the discussion. Thanks! Jon Noring (p.s., there are three ways to subscribe to the DistScan group: 1) Use your YahooID and click on the "Join This Group!" button at the above URL. 2) Send a blank email to: (No need to get a YahooID to subscribe this way.) 3) Ask me to subscribe you with the email address you want to use. No need to get a YahooID to subscribe this way.) |
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Announcing "Distributed Scanners" discussion group (Scanning public domain texts)
Wouldn't it be smarter to contact Project Gutenberg ? They already have a
large backlog of scanned texts that need proofing, and a volunteer/technology structure in place. rms |
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Announcing "Distributed Scanners" discussion group (Scanning public domain texts)
rms wrote:
Wouldn't it be smarter to contact Project Gutenberg ? They already have a large backlog of scanned texts that need proofing, and a volunteer/technology structure in place. Your comment is understandable, but PG is focused on producing and distributing structured digital texts. Usually page scans are used as the source to produce the etext. Thus, the product of DistScan would not only be usable by DP and PG, but would be directly viewable by end-users (thus the reason for archival quality resolution scans.) For an example of directly using book page scans in an innovative way, look at the examples at the OpenLibrary site (managed by the Internet Archive): http://www.openlibrary.org/ . Anyway, I am pretty well plugged into both the Project Gutenberg and Distributed Proofreading communities, and there definitely is interest in the idea of a "Distributed Scanners". The devil is in the details, obviously, and that is the purpose of the DistScan discussion group -- to see if there's some formula that makes practical sense. Since there are millions of scanners out there, and a large number of willing volunteers, leveraging theseresources for the public domain is intriguing. Thanks for your reply. Jon Noring |
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