Distributed proofreaders
February 22nd, 2007Maybe you remember my Christmas e-book stack. After I had downloaded a whole shelf worth of e-books, representing the space of a USB stick, I wondered whether there was a thing I could do to contribute in return. Obviously, I could donate money to the Gutenberg project. But I found better: I found I could contribute by proofreading scanned pages so that they could be turned into free quality e-books.
The distributed proofreaders website organises the work of online volunteers who show up when they feel like proofreading a few pages. The unofficial target is one page a day — I prefer to do seven pages a week. I have found it a marvellous way to contribute, and a great way to get to know books in a totally new fashion. As I write this post, I am correcting OCR mistakes in Hector Berlioz’s Correspondance Inédite. It almost feels as if I am Berlioz’s editor, 138 years after his death.
You might want to give it a try if you feel you have the soul of an editor, if you believe classics are the property of all, if you like to discover new books at random, if you find some thrill in interacting with text, if you want to be part of a team and a project, if you wish to contribute to web 2.0 without being a geek, or if you just do not mind giving a hand to what I believe is a true literary wonder of the world.
This does sound like a marvellous project, Mandarine! If only I had the soul of an editor, I would join in immediately. However, I am pretty much in constant, desperate search of an editor myself, and am the last person I would trust!
I am sure you can spot scan typos. The nice thing about them is that are not tricky — they are generally stupidly obvious. A human would mispell. A computer misspeTls.
Oh, you bad person. Just what I need, another computer project to engage in. Sounds like a lot of fun, and I believe I shall be checking this out. So how are you enjoying Berlioz, anyway? One of my favorite autobiographies was his memoirs. Now THAT was an obsessive man. My favorite music, too.
Well, the “Berlioz correspondance” project is finished now (at least in the proofreading phase). In total, I have (proof)read four or five times seven pages. This gives a strange impression of reading a book trough the leaves of a palm tree. I’ll be noticed by email when the book goes online. Indeed, I will have to determine whether the man was exactly the icon of hypersensitive obsessive romantic that I think he is.
Now I have started Beaumarchais’ memoirs.