I have recently started a project to upload the scans in PDF form of many of the above books to the Internet Archive. The main purpose is to clear the path so that people from all over the world can upload their scans, and was suggested to me by Brewster Kahle. He calls it a Grassroots Book-Scanning enterprise. I am doing a pilot study, with twenty-one books in Stage One, and a further fifty in Stage Two. All the problems should be ironed out by the time this is complete in a few weeks from now. I am working on a manual to advise people wanting to get involved. After that a further hundred books will be prepared, put onto a DVD, and possibly posted for me directly at Internet Archive. There will be many more to follow after that. You can review progress on this project [from this page].
In addition to the PDF I have posted an HTML file for each entire book, and a TEXT file that can be used to make an audiobook. The spelling in the latter has been converted to the American style (some of the posted books have not been done yet). There is also in each book's folder a small text file that explains how easy it is to make a good audiobook, with a recommendation that people should use TextAloud MP3 available from NextUp whence you can also get the highly recommended voices from Acapela. These are of course once-off purchases, and after that you can make the audiobooks for free, except for the small cost of storing them on CDs. The technology also works for most novels on Project Gutenberg. There is a very easy process available within TextAloud for splitting the book into chapter files, correctly named, and from this creating a set of MP3 files for the book, one for each chapter.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/23/2006 12:01:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
