Distributed Proofreaders
{{Short description|Web-based proofreading project}}
{{More citations needed |date=May 2024}}
{{Infobox website
| name = Distributed Proofreaders
| logo = Distributed Proofreaders logo.svg
| logo_size = 300px
| logo_alt = "Distributed Proofreaders" set in blue serif text, with the second word beginning at the bottom right of the first one. Below the second word, "Preserving History One Page at a Time." in black serif text.
| logo_caption =
| screenshot = Distributed Proofreaders.png
| collapsible =
| collapsetext =
| background =
| screenshot_size =
| screenshot_alt = Screenshot of the proofreading interface on Distributed Proofreaders.
| caption = Screenshot of the proofreading interface on Distributed Proofreaders.
| parent = Distributed Proofreaders Foundation (DPF)
| url = {{URL|https://www.pgdp.net}}
| commercial = No
| type = Not-for-profit
| language_count = 2
| registration = Optional
| num_users =
| content_license = Public Domain
| programming_language = PHP{{cite web |url=https://github.com/DistributedProofreaders/dproofreaders |title=Distributed Proofreaders|publisher=github.com |access-date=2022-02-01 }}
| country_of_origin = United States of America
| owner = Distributed Proofreaders Foundation
| author =
| founder = Charles Franks
| launch_date = {{start date and age|2000}}
| GM = Linda Hamilton
| alexa =
| current_status = Active
| oclc = 1087497129
| footnotes =
}}
Distributed Proofreaders (commonly abbreviated as DP or PGDP) 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|July 2024|post=,}} the site had digitized 48,000 titles.{{cite web |url=https://blog.pgdp.net/2021/03/05/celebrating-41000-titles// |title=Celebrating 30,000 Titles | Hot off the Press |publisher=Blog.pgdp.net |date=2015-07-07 |access-date=2016-09-15 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161220140431/https://blog.pgdp.net/2015/07/07/celebrating-30000-titles/ |archive-date=2016-12-20 |url-status=live }}{{cite web |url=https://blog.pgdp.net/2020/04/27/celebrating-39000-titles/ |title=Celebrating 39,000 Titles |publisher=Blog.pgdp.net |date=2020-11-08 |access-date=2020-04-27 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200603215240/https://blog.pgdp.net/2020/04/27/celebrating-39000-titles/ |archive-date=2020-06-03 |url-status=live }}
History
Distributed Proofreaders was founded by Charles Franks in 2000 as an independent site to assist Project Gutenberg.{{cite book
| first=Lawrence | last=Lessig | year=2009
| title=Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy
| page=109 | publisher=Penguin | isbn=978-0-14-311613-4
| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7eRPKIvEo9gC&pg=PT109
}} Distributed Proofreaders became an official Project Gutenberg site in 2002.
On 8 November 2002, Distributed Proofreaders was slashdotted,{{cite web|url=http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Volunteers%27_Voices#Suzanne_Shell|title=Gutenberg:Volunteers' Voices|publisher=Project Gutenberg|access-date=2008-07-12|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080918202824/http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Volunteers%27_Voices#Suzanne_Shell|archive-date=2008-09-18|url-status=dead}}{{cite web|url=http://www.boingboing.net/2002/11/12/distributed-proofrea.html|title=Distributed Proofreading's slashdotting|date=12 November 2002 |publisher=Boing Boing|access-date=2008-07-12|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071109001542/http://www.boingboing.net/2002/11/12/distributed-proofrea.html|archive-date=2007-11-09|url-status=live}} and more than 4,000 new members joined in one day, causing an influx of new proofreaders and software developers, which helped to increase the quantity and quality of e-text production. In July 2015, the 30,000th Distributed Proofreaders produced e-text was posted to Project Gutenberg. DP-contributed e-texts comprised more than half of works in Project Gutenberg, {{as of|2015|07|lc=on}}.
On 31 July 2006, the Distributed Proofreaders Foundation was formed to provide Distributed Proofreaders with its own legal entity and not-for-profit status. IRS approval of section 501(c)(3) status was granted retroactive to 7 April 2006.
Proofreading process
Public domain works, typically books with expired copyright, are scanned by volunteers, or sourced from digitization projects and the images are run through optical character recognition (OCR) software. Since OCR software is far from perfect, many errors often appear in the resulting text. To correct them, pages are made available to volunteers via the Internet; the original page image and the recognized text appear side by side.{{cite conference
|author1=Gentry, Craig |author2=Ramzan, Zulfikar |author3=Stuart Stubblebine | title=Secure Distributed Human Computation
| book-title=Financial cryptography and data security: 9th International Conference
| page=329 | date=February 28 – March 3, 2005
| volume=3570 | series=Lecture Notes in Computer Science
|editor=Andrew S. Patrick |editor2=Moti Yung |editor2-link=Moti Yung | location=Roseau, The Commonwealth of Dominica
| publisher=Springer | isbn=3-540-26656-9
| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JegO2ly7IccC&pg=PA329
| doi=10.1145/1064009.1064026 }} This process thereby distributes the time-consuming error-correction process, akin to distributed computing.
Each page is proofread and formatted several times, and then a post-processor combines the pages and prepares the text for uploading to Project Gutenberg.
Besides custom software created to support the project, DP also runs a forum and a wiki for project coordinators and participants.
Related projects
= DP Europe =
In January 2004, Distributed Proofreaders Europe started, hosted by Project Rastko, Serbia.{{cite web | first=Marie | last=Lebert | date=November 4, 2010 | title=Distributed Proofreaders, producteur des livres du Projet Gutenberg, a 10 ans | language=fr | work=Actualitté | url=http://www.actualitte.com/dossiers/1197-ebooks-projet-gutenberg-distributed-proofreaders.htm | access-date=2011-06-30 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111005175932/http://www.actualitte.com/dossiers/1197-ebooks-projet-gutenberg-distributed-proofreaders.htm | archive-date=October 5, 2011 | url-status=live }} This site had the ability to process text in Unicode UTF-8 encoding. Books proofread centered on European culture, with a considerable proportion of non-English texts including Hebrew, Arabic, Urdu, and many others. {{As of|2013|alt=As of October 2013}}, DP Europe had produced 787 e-texts, the last of these in November 2011.
The original DP is sometimes referred to as "DP International" by members of DP Europe. However, DP servers are located in the United States, and therefore works must be cleared by Project Gutenberg as being in the public domain according to U.S. copyright law before they can be proofread and eventually published at DP.
= DP Canada =
In December 2007, Distributed Proofreaders Canada launched to support the production of e-books for Project Gutenberg Canada and take advantage of shorter Canadian copyright terms. Although it was established by members of the original Distributed Proofreaders site, it is a separate entity. All its projects are posted to Faded Page, their book archive website. In addition, it supplies books to Project Gutenberg Canada (which launched on Canada Day 2007) and (where copyright laws are compatible) to the original Project Gutenberg.
In addition to preserving Canadiana, DP Canada is notable because it is the first major effort to take advantage of Canada's copyright laws which may allow more works to be preserved. Unlike copyright law in some other countries, Canada has a "life plus 50" copyright term. This means that works by authors who died more than fifty years ago may be preserved in Canada, whereas in other parts of the world those works may not be distributed because they are still under copyright.
Notable authors whose works may be preserved in Canada but not in other parts of the world include Clark Ashton Smith, Dashiell Hammett, Ernest Hemingway, Carl Jung, A. A. Milne, Dorothy Sayers, Nevil Shute, Walter de la Mare, Sheila Kaye-Smith and Amy Carmichael.
Milestones
| class="wikitable" |
| Milestone
! Date ! e-text !Source |
|---|
| First
| 1 Oct 2000 | The Odyssey, Homer, Lang tr. (first pages for proofreading) |
| 1,000th
| 19 Feb 2003 | Tales of St. Austin's, P. G. Wodehouse |
| 2,000th
| 3 Sep 2003 | Hamlet — the 'Bad Quarto', William Shakespeare |
| 3,000th
| 14 Jan 2004 | The Anatomy of Melancholy, Robert Burton |
| 4,000th
| 6 Apr 2004 | Aventures du Capitaine Hatteras, Jules Verne |
| 5,000th
| 24 Aug 2004 | A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, John William Cousin |
| 6,000th
| 2 Feb 2005 |
| 7,000th
| 23 Jun 2005 | Opúsculos por Alexandre Herculano (Vol. I), Alexandre Herculano; |
| 8,000th
| 8 Feb 2006 | The Suppression of the African slave-trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870, W. E. B. Du Bois |
| 9,000th
| 8 Sep 2006 | History of the World War for Human Rights, Kelly Miller; |
| 10,000th
| 9 Mar 2007 | (See 10,000th E-book below) |
| 11,000th
| 12 Sep 2007 | Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943, Northern Nut Growers Association |
| 12,000th
| 26 Jan 2008 | Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens, Sigmund Freud |
| 13,000th
| 24 Jun 2008 | A World of Girls, L. T. Meade |
| 14,000th
| 1 Dec 2008 | The Art of Stage Dancing, Ned Wayburn |
| 15,000th
| 12 May 2009 | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666, Various. Henry Oldenburg (editor) |
| 16,000th
| 1 Oct 2009 | ABC Petits Contes, Jules Lemaître |
| 17,000th
| 4 Mar 2010 | The Position of Woman in Primitive Society, C. Gasquoine Hartley |
| 18,000th
| 15 Jun 2010 | Area Handbook for Romania, Eugene K. Keefe, et al. |
| 19,000th
| 10 Nov 2010 | Vanden Vos Reinaerde Uitgegeven en Toegelicht (anonymous) |
| 20,000th
| 10 April 2011 | (See 20,000th E-book below) |
| 22,000th
| 2 Jan 2012 | "The Nibelungenlied", William Nanson Lettsom's translation |
| 25,000th
| 10 April 2013 | The Art and Practice of Silver Printing, H. P. Robinson and Capt. Abney |
| 30,000th
| 7 July 2015 | Graded Literature Readers: Fourth Book |
| 35,000th
| 26 Jan 2018 | Shores of the Polar Sea, a Narrative of the Arctic Expedition of 1875–1876 |
| 36,000th
|7 September 2018 |American Missionary |
| 37,000th
|16 April 2019 |French Painting of the 19th Century in the National Gallery of Art |
| 38,000th
|8 November 2019 |The Birds of Australia (Vol. 3 of 7) |
| 39,000th
|27 April 2020 |Wilhelm Hauffs sämtliche Werke in sechs Bänden. Bd. 6 |
| 40,000th
|10 October 2020 |All four volumes of London Labour and the London Poor{{cite web|url=https://blog.pgdp.net/2020/10/10/celebrating-40000-titles |title=Celebrating 40,000 Titles |date=10 October 2020 |publisher=Pgdp.net}} |
| 41,000th
|5 March 2021 |Clara Barton's The story of my childhood{{cite web|url=https://blog.pgdp.net/2021/03/05/celebrating-41000-titles |title=Celebrating 41,000 Titles |date=5 March 2021 |publisher=Pgdp.net}} |
| 42,000th
|3 August 2021 |Carry On, Jeeves |
| 43,000th
|31 January 2022 |Die Sitten der Völker, Zweiter Band{{cite web | url = https://blog.pgdp.net/2022/02/01/celebrating-43000-titles/ | title = Celebrating 43,000 Titles | date = February 1, 2022 | website = blog.pgdp.net | access-date = February 1, 2022}} |
| 44,000th
|19 July 2022 |The trial of Émile Zola{{cite web |url=https://blog.pgdp.net/2022/07/19/celebrating-44000-titles/ |title=Celebrating 44,000 Titles |date=19 July 2022 |publisher=Pgdp.net}} |
| 45,000th
|18 January 2023 |Elihu Stewart's Down the Mackenzie and Up the Yukon in 1906{{cite web |url=https://blog.pgdp.net/2023/01/18/celebrating-45000-titles/ |title=Celebrating 45,000 Titles |date=18 January 2023 |publisher=Pgdp.net}} |
| 46,000th
|3 July 2023 |The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (the Child Ballads){{cite web |url=https://blog.pgdp.net/2023/07/03/celebrating-46000-titles/ |title=Celebrating 46,000 Titles |date=3 July 2021 |publisher=Pgdp.net}} |
| 47,000th
|20 December 2023 |The Betty Crocker Picture Cooky Book{{cite web |url=https://blog.pgdp.net/2023/12/20/celebrating-47000-titles/ |title=Celebrating 47,000 Titles |date=20 December 2023 |publisher=Pgdp.net}} |
| 48,000th
|19 July 2024 |The Reign of King Oberon{{cite web |url=https://blog.pgdp.net/2024/07/19/celebrating-48000-titles/ |title=Celebrating 48,000 Titles |date=19 July 2024 |publisher=Pgdp.net}} |
= 10,000th E-book =
On 9 March 2007, Distributed Proofreaders announced the completion of more than 10,000 titles. In celebration, a collection of fifteen titles was published:
- Slave Narratives, Oklahoma (A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves) by the U.S. Work Projects Administration (English)
- Eighth annual report of the Bureau of ethnology. (1891 N 08 / 1886–1887) edited by John Wesley Powell (English)
- R. Caldecott's First Collection of Pictures and Songs by Randolph Caldecott [Illustrator] (English)
- Como atravessei Àfrica (Volume II) by Serpa Pinto (Portuguese)
- Triplanetary by E. E. "Doc" Smith (English)
- Heidi by Johanna Spyri (English)
- Heimatlos by Johanna Spyri (German)
- October 27, 1920 issue of Punch (English)
- Sylva, or, A Discourse of Forest-Trees by John Evelyn (English)
- Encyclopedia of Needlework by Therese de Dillmont (English)
- The annals of the Cakchiquels by Francisco Ernantez Arana (fl. 1582), translated and edited by Daniel G. Brinton (1837–1899) (English with Central American Indian)
- The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties (1921) by Richard Runciman Terry (1864–1938) (English)
- Le marchand de Venise by William Shakespeare, translated by François Guizot (French)
- Agriculture for beginners, Rev. ed. by Charles William Burkett (English)
- Species Plantarum (Part 1) by Carl Linnaeus (Carl von Linné) (Latin)
= 20,000th E-book =
On April 10, 2011, the 20,000th book milestone was celebrated as a group release of bilingual books:[http://blog.pgdp.net/2011/04/09/distributed-proofreaders-celebrates-20000-books-posted/ Distributed Proofreaders celebrates 20,000 books posted] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110619033646/http://blog.pgdp.net/2011/04/09/distributed-proofreaders-celebrates-20000-books-posted/ |date=2011-06-19 }}, Distributed Proofreaders, April 10, 2011
- The Renaissance in Italy–Italian Literature, Vol 1, John Addington Symonds (English with Italian)
- Märchen und Erzählungen für Anfänger; erster Teil, H. A. Guerber (German with English)
- Gedichte und Sprüche, Walther von der Vogelweide (Middle High German ({{circa|1050}}–1500) with German)
- Studien und Plaudereien im Vaterland, Sigmon Martin Stern (German with English)
- Caos del Triperuno, Teofilo Folengo (Italian with Latin)
- Niederländische Volkslieder, Hoffmann von Fallersleben (German with Dutch)
- A "San Francisco", Salvatore Di Giacomo (Italian with Neapolitan)
- O' voto, Salvatore Di Giacomo (Italian with Neapolitan)
- De Latino sine Flexione & Principio de Permanentia, Giuseppe Peano (1858–1932) (Latin with Latino sine Flexione)
- Cappiddazzu paga tuttu—Nino Martoglio, Luigi Pirandello (Italian with Sicilian)
- The International Auxiliary Language Esperanto, George Cox (English with Esperanto)
- Lusitania: canti popolari portoghesi, Ettore Toci (Italian with French)
= 30,000th E-book =
On 7 July 2015, the 30,000th book milestone was celebrated with a group of thirty texts. One was numbered 30,000:{{cite web|url=http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=59120 |title=Distributed Proofreaders • View topic - 30,000 Unique Titles Preserved! |publisher=Pgdp.net |access-date=2016-09-15}}
- Graded literature readers - Fourth book, editors: Harry Pratt Judson and Ida C. Bender, 1900
See also
References
{{Reflist}}