My Contributions to Project Gutenberg and Distributed Proofreaders by caweyant

books · @caweyant · May 31 '17

$20.14

My Contributions to Project Gutenberg and Distributed Proofreaders

<html>
<div class="pull-right"><p><img src="https://steemitimages.com/DQmTeW1wFtctV9dfJQK5umGHTDEHQ6iv9qf1MCGrycAYuS5/projectgutenburg.jpg" alt="Project Gutenberg logo" /></p></div>
<p>About 10 years ago, I was very active in the <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org">Project Gutenberg</a> community. I've long been a fan of both books and open culture, and I wanted to help spread some of the joy I felt from those areas of my life by contributing to the cause.</p>
<p>A lot of the work I did was through a volunteer project known as the <a href="http://pgdp.net">Distributed Proofreaders</a>. This is an independent organization created by a man named Charles Franks, whose primary goal was to distribute the effort required for scanning in books, processing page images using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software, proofreading each page, and then assembling the proofread pages into a finished ebook suitable for Project Gutenberg.</p>
<p>I started with Distributed Proofreaders as a simple proofreader early in the project. After a few years, however, I became a regular contributor and project manager, helping to shepherd through literally hundreds of books –&nbsp;in addition to continuing my proofreading of random pages from various other books.</p>
<p>During the height of my involvement with the projects, I was buying as many old books as I could find simply to make sure they would be preserved for posterity. I purchased an old scanner that I spent hours (days even) scanning in pages, and would run them through Abbyy Finereader OCR software and a bunch of custom scripts created by myself and other members of the Distributed Proofreaders community.</p>
<p>Around the same time, a lot of university libraries were in the early stages of putting their public domain books online. I created a perl script called "snatch" that would download the page images for these books. A number of content providers and project managers for Distributed Proofreaders besides myself used the script. You can read the documentation and download it on my personal website (although it is long out of date and no longer actively maintained).</p>
<p>In fact, I haven't been active in either Project Gutenberg or Distributed Proofreaders in many years – though I still log in and proofread a page or two from time to time. But I got to thinking about all of this recently, and I decided that I should put together a list of books that I had some level of meaningful involvement in creating.</p>
<h2>Books I Helped Contribute to Project Gutenberg</h2>
<p>On my personal blog, I've created a table with a  <a href="http://www.curtisweyant.com/blog/list-of-project-gutenberg-contributions/">list of all the books I helped to contributed to Project Gutenberg</a>. I normally don't like referencing things outside of Steemit, but the list was too big to post here.</p>
<p>Note that I'm only counting "major" contributions, not books where I merely proofread a few pages or so. This includes books which I did one or more of the following:</p>
<ul>
<li>Scanned or downloaded page images and processed the text as a content provider for Distributed Proofreaders</li>
<li>Managed the book through the Distributed Proofreading process as a project manager</li>
<li>Post-processed books after it had been shepherded through the Distributed Proofreaders project management system</li>
<li>Produced the ebook independently for Project Gutenberg (outside of Distributed Proofreaders)</li>
</ul>
<p>By my count, I played a major role in contributing 376 ebooks to Project Gutenberg. I'm proud of every one, and I hope to talk about many of them individually here on Steemit in future posts.</p>
<hr/>
<h2>Recent Posts</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://steemit.com/music/@caweyant/old-crow-medicine-show-brewery-ommegang-cooperstown-ny">Old Crow Medicine Show @ Brewery Ommegang (Cooperstown, NY)</a></li>
  <li><a href="https://steemit.com/music/@caweyant/sirsy-at-shifty-s-bar-and-grill-friday-may-26">Sirsy at Shifty's Bar &amp; Grill – Friday, May 26</a></li>
  <li><a href="https://steemit.com/memechallenge/@caweyant/meme-challenge-19-entry-1-it-s-your-moooooooooove">Meme Challenge #19 – Entry #1 – It's Your Moooooooooove…</a></li>
  <li><a href="https://steemit.com/funny/@caweyant/sunday-punday-upping-the-steaks">Sunday Punday: Upping the Steaks</a></li>
  <li><a href="https://steemit.com/education/@caweyant/signum-university-launches-anytime-auditing">Signum University Launches Anytime Auditing</a></li>
  <li><a href="https://steemit.com/memechallenge/@caweyant/meme-challenge-18-entry-1">Meme Challenge 18 – Entry 1</a></li>
  <li><a href="https://steemit.com/movies/@caweyant/joss-whedon-takes-over-justice-league">Joss Whedon Takes Over "Justice League"</a></li>
</ul>
<hr/>

<table>
	<thead>
		<tr>
			<th>Follow Curtis</th>
			<th>Follow Bookdotes</th>
		</tr>
	</thead>
	<tbody>
		<tr>
			<td style="vertical-align: top"> 
			<ul>
				<li>@caweyant</li>
				<li><a href="https://twitter.com/curtdubya">Twitter</a></li>
				<li><a href="https://www.facebook.com/caweyant/">Facebook</a></li>
				<li><a href="https://www.instagram.com/curtdubya">Instagram</a></li>
				<li><a href="https://curtdubya.tumblr.com">tumblr</a></li>
				<li><a href="http://www.curtisweyant.com/blog/">Blog</a></li>
			</ul>
			</td>
			<td style="vertical-align: top">
			<ul>
				<li><a href="https://twitter.com/bookdotes">Twitter</a></li>
				<li><a href="https://www.facebook.com/bookdotes/">Facebook</a></li>
				<li><a href="https://www.instagram.com/bookdotes">Instagram</a></li>
			</ul>
			</td>
		</tr>
	</tbody>
</table>
<p>
	<center>
		<a href="http://www.curtisweyant.com/"><img src="http://www.curtisweyant.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/cwlogo-180x180-transparent.png"></a>
	</center>
</p>
</html>

👍 analisa, dunia, kevinwong, liberosist, boxcarblue, myvoter, funnyman, marius19, leongkhan, crowdfundedwhale, alcibiades, allyouneedtoknow, dmaddock1, caweyant, teofilex11, looftee, vickaboleyn, gregb80, svinsent, rycharde, anwarabdullah, aismor, eusebio, lautenglye, bresta

`author`	caweyant
`permlink`	my-contributions-to-project-gutenberg-and-distributed-proofreaders
`category`	books
`json_metadata`	{"tags":["books","literature","culture","life","blog"],"users":["caweyant"],"image":["https://steemitimages.com/DQmTeW1wFtctV9dfJQK5umGHTDEHQ6iv9qf1MCGrycAYuS5/projectgutenburg.jpg","http://www.curtisweyant.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/cwlogo-180x180-transparent.png"],"links":["http://www.gutenberg.org","http://pgdp.net","http://www.curtisweyant.com/blog/list-of-project-gutenberg-contributions/","https://steemit.com/music/@caweyant/old-crow-medicine-show-brewery-ommegang-cooperstown-ny","https://steemit.com/music/@caweyant/sirsy-at-shifty-s-bar-and-grill-friday-may-26","https://steemit.com/memechallenge/@caweyant/meme-challenge-19-entry-1-it-s-your-moooooooooove","https://steemit.com/funny/@caweyant/sunday-punday-upping-the-steaks","https://steemit.com/education/@caweyant/signum-university-launches-anytime-auditing","https://steemit.com/memechallenge/@caweyant/meme-challenge-18-entry-1","https://steemit.com/movies/@caweyant/joss-whedon-takes-over-justice-league","https://twitter.com/curtdubya","https://www.facebook.com/caweyant/","https://www.instagram.com/curtdubya","https://curtdubya.tumblr.com","http://www.curtisweyant.com/blog/","https://twitter.com/bookdotes","https://www.facebook.com/bookdotes/","https://www.instagram.com/bookdotes","http://www.curtisweyant.com/"],"app":"steemit/0.1","format":"html"}
`created`	2017-05-31 22:47:21
`last_update`	2017-05-31 22:47:21
`depth`	0
`children`	3
`last_payout`	2017-06-07 22:47:21
`cashout_time`	1969-12-31 23:59:59
`total_payout_value`	15.152 HBD
`curator_payout_value`	4.989 HBD
`pending_payout_value`	0.000 HBD
`promoted`	0.000 HBD
`body_length`	5,798
`author_reputation`	3,553,866,384,004
`root_title`	"My Contributions to Project Gutenberg and Distributed Proofreaders"
`beneficiaries`	`[]`
`max_accepted_payout`	1,000,000.000 HBD
`percent_hbd`	10,000
`post_id`	4,011,014
`net_rshares`	4,081,135,033,533
`author_curate_reward`	""

properties (23)vote details (25)

voter	rshares	pct
analisa	2,045,106,605,866	100%
kevinwong	507,387,989,148	50%
liberosist	372,416,625,820	100%
marius19	48,417,049,582	100%
allyouneedtoknow	10,425,125,147	80%
boxcarblue	97,396,964,024	100%
funnyman	50,327,040,234	100%
alcibiades	19,239,203,906	50%
crowdfundedwhale	37,186,452,381	60%
teofilex11	6,385,480,799	50%
leongkhan	48,226,642,803	100%
dmaddock1	9,901,623,271	100%
dunia	734,675,247,180	100%
eusebio	461,051,312	100%
anwarabdullah	678,519,896	100%
caweyant	7,561,482,571	100%
myvoter	76,894,534,142	40%
looftee	3,157,230,128	20%
aismor	653,688,270	100%
vickaboleyn	1,553,819,137	100%
gregb80	1,196,045,466	100%
lautenglye	197,172,740	100%
svinsent	933,009,924	100%
rycharde	756,429,786	100%
bresta	0	100%