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I have long been a fan of Project Gutenberg, which scans books that are in the public domain, OCRs them, proofreads them, formats them, and puts them up for free as ebooks. That is a lot of labor, that a lot of people do for free, and in fact I have done some of that labor; I started proofreading for them through Distributed Proofreaders back in 2003. (I've been on there so long that my user name there is "Beatrice" and not Beatrice_Otter.") Now, over the course of that time there have been many years where I didn't do any proofreading at all; but I keep circling back to it. When I want to do something that is useful, and which has a concrete result where I can see exactly what I've accomplished, and which I can do from my computer, PGDP is great.
However, I've often bemoaned that when there's a tricky passage, I never know if I got it right, because I can't check and see if the next proofreader or formatter corrected things (they do three rounds of proofreading and two rounds of formatting per work, for quality control). I knew there had to be a way to do it! But I couldn't find it. I could find lists of pages I'd worked on, but nothing that would show me what the pages looked like after the next round of proofing or formatting was done. It's a bit frustrating!
But I have finally, after 22 years of working there, found the page that will SHOW ME what changes more senior proofers and/or formatters made, so I can see what I need to do differently. If you go to the "My Projects" page there is a link in the corner that says "Review Work" that will take you to a page that will show you links to every change that got made to work you did. I am linking the page here so that if I ever forget how to get to that page, I will have a link to it.
That particular frustration aside, I do recommend PGDP, they have a very slick system, it's great. And obviously, if you're looking for ebooks of works that should be in the public domain, Project Gutenberg is the place to start.
Or at least, that's what I thought until recently! Someone on the Yuletide discord mentioned Standard Ebooks, which is a group that takes Project Gutenberg ebooks and formats them nicely, to the standards of a major publishing company, and then puts them up for free. They are much nicer than PG ebooks; PG ebooks can best be described as "serviceable." They are very accurate! ... just not always nice to look at, and the formatting guidelines were created back in the early 2000s and are bare-bones at best. However, Standard is a much newer group, and also, they're smaller; PG has over 75k ebooks and Standard has 1200. (On the other hand, since Standard has focused on the great classics, the sorts of books that are most likely to be still in demand today, and PGDP has all the classics plus a lot of other stuff, chances are that Standard will have what you're looking for.) So now my advice for older books would be to check out Standard first, and if they don't have it, go to Gutenberg.
Another great resource for public domain ebooks is Librivox. They do crowdsourced audiobooks of public domain books, and I have thought about volunteering there because I do have a recording setup, but also, recording an entire book is a LOT more of a time commitment than proofreading a few pages, and also, the books that I would be most interested in already have versions available on Librivox.
And if you, too, are interested in doing crowdsourced data work and bringing old things to a more usable form, but if Gutenberg isn't speaking to you, check out the Smithsonian! The Smithsonian has a website where people can transcribe old records in the collections of a wide variety of museums. And they have things sorted by theme so you can choose to work with materials related to the African American experience, women's experience, Native American experience, art and design, natural history, and a variety of other categories. Although for most of the stuff here you need to be able to read bad cursive handwriting. (Anyone who tells you that everybody in the 19th Century had good handwriting is a filthy liar.)
However, I've often bemoaned that when there's a tricky passage, I never know if I got it right, because I can't check and see if the next proofreader or formatter corrected things (they do three rounds of proofreading and two rounds of formatting per work, for quality control). I knew there had to be a way to do it! But I couldn't find it. I could find lists of pages I'd worked on, but nothing that would show me what the pages looked like after the next round of proofing or formatting was done. It's a bit frustrating!
But I have finally, after 22 years of working there, found the page that will SHOW ME what changes more senior proofers and/or formatters made, so I can see what I need to do differently. If you go to the "My Projects" page there is a link in the corner that says "Review Work" that will take you to a page that will show you links to every change that got made to work you did. I am linking the page here so that if I ever forget how to get to that page, I will have a link to it.
That particular frustration aside, I do recommend PGDP, they have a very slick system, it's great. And obviously, if you're looking for ebooks of works that should be in the public domain, Project Gutenberg is the place to start.
Or at least, that's what I thought until recently! Someone on the Yuletide discord mentioned Standard Ebooks, which is a group that takes Project Gutenberg ebooks and formats them nicely, to the standards of a major publishing company, and then puts them up for free. They are much nicer than PG ebooks; PG ebooks can best be described as "serviceable." They are very accurate! ... just not always nice to look at, and the formatting guidelines were created back in the early 2000s and are bare-bones at best. However, Standard is a much newer group, and also, they're smaller; PG has over 75k ebooks and Standard has 1200. (On the other hand, since Standard has focused on the great classics, the sorts of books that are most likely to be still in demand today, and PGDP has all the classics plus a lot of other stuff, chances are that Standard will have what you're looking for.) So now my advice for older books would be to check out Standard first, and if they don't have it, go to Gutenberg.
Another great resource for public domain ebooks is Librivox. They do crowdsourced audiobooks of public domain books, and I have thought about volunteering there because I do have a recording setup, but also, recording an entire book is a LOT more of a time commitment than proofreading a few pages, and also, the books that I would be most interested in already have versions available on Librivox.
And if you, too, are interested in doing crowdsourced data work and bringing old things to a more usable form, but if Gutenberg isn't speaking to you, check out the Smithsonian! The Smithsonian has a website where people can transcribe old records in the collections of a wide variety of museums. And they have things sorted by theme so you can choose to work with materials related to the African American experience, women's experience, Native American experience, art and design, natural history, and a variety of other categories. Although for most of the stuff here you need to be able to read bad cursive handwriting. (Anyone who tells you that everybody in the 19th Century had good handwriting is a filthy liar.)
no subject
Date: 2025-01-26 08:34 am (UTC)From:and thank you for doing the proofreading and even more for bothering to find out how to do do it 'better'!
(it's not a given, these days...)
no subject
Date: 2025-01-26 09:09 pm (UTC)From: