Book People Archive

Re: Paul Duguid article: "Limits of self-organization: Peer production and quality"

john said:
>    Well, I suppose someone could go through the books, see
>    which ones are credited to outside projects (MOA, Canadiana Online)
>    and sent me a file of links to the page images there.

maybe someone will give you this as present over the holidays.       :+)


>    As another possibility, I suppose one could find another useful
>    big collection with OCR-quality images and work with that.
>    To date, I've been thinking in terms of Gutenberg, but they're not
>    the only project that one might do interesting alternative interfaces for.

i love michael hart, which is why i've focused on project gutenberg.

but there are too many asses hanging out over there, so i intend
to turn my attention to o.c.a./google scansets in the coming year.

i'll mount my version of the p.g. library, but it's clear where the future is.

(actually, it's been clear for a while.   my first post to this listserve in
2005 was a comment on how to handle "the coming avalanche of scansets"...)


>    Integrated text-and-scansets are a nice option,
>    but not the one everyone will pick.

you misunderstood my point.

i will be offering people text-only, scans-only, and the text-scan hybrid,
depending on what they prefer.   i'm not dictating any approach to them.


>    particularly if they want to read them offline
>    without waiting for your offline viewer program
>    to become generally available

i can make it "generally available" any time i want.


>    and supported on whatever device they're using to read books.)

for the "devices" on which it's not supported,
people can access the online viewer-program.

the other thing is that z.m.l. is simple to support...
a half-decent programmer could write the routines
in a _week_ or so.   or, if i released the source-code,
they could all be ported in one day, two at the most.


>    One of the reasons I have Gutenberg cover pages
>    in the first place instead of just a linking to a particular
>    Gutenberg format is that I found out that people wanted
>    choice in formats, and it was relatively easy for me to
>    give them that choice, given the regularity in Gutenberg
>    ebook filenames and a little programming on my end.

i understand quite well.   user tastes are heterogeneous.

so from a z.m.l. master text, using my offline program,
users will be able to export to a wide variety of formats,
from .html to .pdf to .rtf to slideshows to ipod-slices.

further, the conversions they create will be _customized_
with their choice of fonts, typesize, leading, colors, etc.
(except, of course, the ipod slices, which are unstyled.)


>    There's also evidence that lots of folks like the
>    additional converted formats that Manybooks provides

manybooks is doing a great service indeed,
especially since blackmask has disappeared.

manybooks is making unstyled, uni-sized books
without any structural typography, however, and
the look of that format cannot stand up to mine...


>    I think I'll start by accommodating
>    an addition to the existing architecture,
>    rather than tearing down the existing house
>    in the hopes a better one will be provided

i'm not sure why you would think i had suggested
that you should "tear down" your "existing house".

especially since i went out of my way to state that
i believe your catalog is an outstanding resource...

even once i've intertwined the digital text and scans of
any particular book, other digital versions of that book
will continue to exist out in cyberspace, so any catalog
(like yours) that points to _all_ of them is a good thing.

and even if i do my job correctly, and the vast majority of
users flock to my library because it has the best features,
i will continue to appreciate those other digital versions,
and do what i can to ensure they have long happy lives...

because it's not a zero-sum game.

-bowerbird