Available in | English, French |
---|---|
URL | |
Commercial | No |
Registration | Required |
Launched | December 1, 2007 |
Current status | Active |
Content license | Public Domain |
Written in | PHP [1] |
Distributed Proofreaders Canada (DP Canada) is a volunteer organization that transfers books into electronic format and releases them as public domain books in formats readable by electronic devices. It was launched in December 2007 and as of 2023 [update] has published about 8,000 books. Books that are released are stored on a book archive called Faded Page. While its focus is on Canadian publications and preserving Canadiana, it also includes books from other countries as well. It is modelled after Distributed Proofreaders, and performs the same function as similar projects in other parts of the world such as Project Gutenberg in the United States and Project Gutenberg Australia.
Distributed Proofreaders Canada was launched in December 2007 by David Jones and Michael Shepard. Although it was established by members of the original Distributed Proofreaders site, it is a separate entity. [2] It is a volunteer-based, non-profit organization. All the administrative and management costs are borne by its members. The software used by DP Canada was originally downloaded from SourceForge but has been substantially modified since then.
In addition to preserving Canadiana, DP Canada is notable because it is one of the first major efforts to take advantage of Canada's copyright laws which allows more works to be preserved. Unlike copyright law in other countries, Canada had until 2022 a "life plus 50" copyright term. Works by authors who died before 1972 became part of the public domain. Starting in 2023, this was changed to life plus 70. Therefore works by authors who died in 1972 won't become public domain until 2043. [3] [4] Other countries have differing copyright laws. Although files available through DP Canada are publicly available in other countries, the onus is on the reader to ensure that they only download material that is not in copyright in their country of residence.
Notable Canadian authors whose books have been published include Stephen Leacock, L. M. Montgomery, E. T. Seton and Mazo de la Roche. Authors whose works have been released in Canada but not other parts of the world include A. A. Milne, C. S. Lewis, Winston Churchill, E. E. Smith, Amy Carmichael, and Albert Camus.
Eligible books are chosen by members for publication based on personal interest and access. Every book is vetted to ensure that the author and any other content provider such as illustrators and translators are in the public domain. [5] Books are scanned electronically and each page is uploaded to the proofreading website. A project is created for the book and is made available to the proofreading members. Each book is proofread in three stages called 'P1', 'P2' and 'P3'. During the first stage, errors in scanning and other minor errors are corrected. Once all pages in the book have been edited the book pages are promoted to the next stage, P2. The proofreading is repeated and again in stage P3 to ensure no errors make it to the final publication. [6]
Once stage P3 is finished the book moves to a set of two formatting stages called 'F1', and 'F2'. In these stages the book text is changed into a format that allows it to be presented to the reader in a style that resembles the original book as closely as possible. For example, text originally appearing in italic type is placed within formatting tags <i>this text is in italics</i>. When formatted the text appears correctly as this text is in italics. [7]
When the formatting stages are complete, a post-processing stage brings all the files together to publish the books in five electronic formats. These include ePub, mobi, HTML, PDF and plain text. The HTML version is also made available as a Zip file.
Before the books are added to the Faded Page book archive, the books are placed in a final round called 'Smooth Reading'. While in this phase, members of DP Canada are encouraged to download the books and read them. While the books are in this phase, comments about the book for possible improvements can be sent to the post processor. Once past the Smooth Reading process, the publication is posted on Faded Page.
The books that are published by DP Canada in the public domain are made available through the Faded Page book archive. Some of the publications released are also posted to the Project Gutenberg Canada (PG Canada) website. PG Canada is a book archive that does not perform proofreading tasks.
Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of books or individual stories in the public domain. All files can be accessed for free under an open format layout, available on almost any computer. As of 3 October 2015, Project Gutenberg had reached 50,000 items in its collection of free eBooks.
The Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1910–1911) is a 29-volume reference work, an edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. It was developed during the encyclopaedia's transition from a British to an American publication. Some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time. This edition of the encyclopaedia, containing 40,000 entries, has entered the public domain and is readily available on the Internet. Its use in modern scholarship and as a reliable source has been deemed problematic due to the outdated nature of some of its content. Modern scholars have deemed some articles as cultural artifacts of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Michael Stern Hart was an American author, best known as the inventor of the e-book and the founder of Project Gutenberg (PG), the first project to make e-books freely available via the Internet. He published e-books via ARPANET years before the Internet existed, and later on BBS networks and Gopher servers.
Distributed Proofreaders is a web-based project that supports the development of e-texts for Project Gutenberg by allowing many people to work together in proofreading drafts of e-texts for errors. As of March 2021, the site had digitized 41,000 titles.
Electronic publishing includes the digital publication of e-books, digital magazines, and the development of digital libraries and catalogues. It also includes the editing of books, journals, and magazines to be posted on a screen.
To publish is to make content available to the general public. While specific use of the term may vary among countries, it is usually applied to text, images, or other audio-visual content, including paper. Publication means the act of publishing, and also any copies issued for public distribution.
Proofreading is an iterative process of comparing galley proofs against the original manuscripts or graphic artworks to identify transcription errors in the typesetting process. In the past, proofreaders would place corrections or proofreading marks along the margins. In modern publishing, material is generally provided in electronic form, traditional typesetting is no longer used and thus this kind of transcription no longer occurs. Consequently the part played by pure proofreaders in the process has almost vanished: the role has been absorbed into copy editing to such an extent that their names have become interchangeable. Modern copy-editors may check layout alongside their traditional checks on grammar, punctuation and readability.
An online encyclopedia, also called an Internet encyclopedia, is a digital encyclopedia accessible through the Internet. Examples include Wikipedia since 2001, the Encyclopædia Britannica since 2016, and Encyclopedia.com.
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Wikisource is an online digital library of free-content textual sources on a wiki, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikisource is the name of the project as a whole and the name for each instance of that project ; multiple Wikisources make up the overall project of Wikisource. The project's aim is to host all forms of free text, in many languages, and translations. Originally conceived as an archive to store useful or important historical texts, it has expanded to become a general-content library. The project officially began on November 24, 2003, under the name Project Sourceberg, a play on the famous Project Gutenberg. The name Wikisource was adopted later that year and it received its own domain name.
Carson of Venus is a science fantasy novel by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, the third book in the Venus series. Burroughs wrote the novel in July and August 1937. It was serialized in 1938 in six weekly installments from January 8 to February 12 in Argosy, the same publication where the previous two Venus novels appeared. It was published in book form a year later from Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. Burroughs originally submitted the novel to a number of the "slick" magazines: Liberty, The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, and Ladies' Home Journal. All rejected the story.
Open Library is an online project intended to create "one web page for every book ever published". Created by Aaron Swartz, Brewster Kahle, Alexis Rossi, Anand Chitipothu, and Rebecca Malamud, Open Library is a project of the Internet Archive, a nonprofit organization. It has been funded in part by grants from the California State Library and the Kahle/Austin Foundation. Open Library provides online digital copies in multiple formats, created from images of many public domain, out-of-print, and in-print books.
Google Books is a service from Google that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical character recognition (OCR), and stored in its digital database. Books are provided either by publishers and authors through the Google Books Partner Program, or by Google's library partners through the Library Project. Additionally, Google has partnered with a number of magazine publishers to digitize their archives.
Pirates of Venus is a science fantasy novel by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, the first book in the Venus series, the last major series in Burroughs's career. It was first serialized in six parts in Argosy in 1932 and published in book form two years later by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. The events occur on a fictionalized version of the planet Venus, known as "Amtor" to its inhabitants.
Lost On Venus is a science fantasy novel by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, the second book in the Venus series. It was first serialized in the magazine Argosy in 1933 and published in book form two years later.
LibriVox is a group of worldwide volunteers who read and record public domain texts, creating free public domain audiobooks for download from their website and other digital library hosting sites on the internet. It was founded in 2005 by Hugh McGuire to provide "Acoustical liberation of books in the public domain" and the LibriVox objective is "To make all books in the public domain available, for free, in audio format on the internet".
William Kirby, was a Canadian author, best known for his classic historical novel, The Golden Dog.
Project Gutenberg Canada, also known as Project Gutenburg of Canada, is a Canadian digital library founded July 1, 2007 by Dr. Mark Akrigg. The website allows Canadian residents to create e-texts and download books, including those that are otherwise not in the public domain in other countries.
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An ebook, also known as an e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in electronic form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Although sometimes defined as "an electronic version of a printed book", some e-books exist without a printed equivalent. E-books can be read on dedicated e-reader devices, also on any computer device that features a controllable viewing screen, including desktop computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones.