Book People Archive

Re: Death date researches (was: Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter)

Klaus Graf wrote:
> I would be glad to see PG sued for a foreign court.

I don't see why one would be.  (There's always schadenfreude, I suppose,
but I'm told that that sentiment is considered ignoble in German-speaking
as well as in English-speaking cultures.)  Suits are expensive to all
concerned, so unless there's a good reason to believe that the outcome will
produce a much better result than other, less expensive means, they're
best avoided.

> Why should each foreign user
> make this recherche if PG can EASILY privide this essentials.

On a quick look, it appears that PG has already covered most of the
easy cases.  If I look at a random author letter (N) in the Gutenberg catalog,
I see over 200 items under a personal name with included dates, and fewer
than 75 items under a personal name without dates.  (Most of those latter
names only have 1 or 2 items; those names tend to be both more frequent
and more obscure.)

I suspect most of the remaining cases will require a bit more than
trivial research.  The resources you mention at

 > http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/3537378/

may well be helpful with some of the remaining names, and I thank you
for these.  (I hope to adapt some of the information there, including credit
for your work, on an English-language page.   If you happen to have English
for the text already, let me know; it'll make the work a little easier.)

So if anyone wants to use the URL above or other resources to add dates
to the names that don't have them yet, I'd encourage them to do so and
send the results to PG and to me.  As you point out, one user doing this
is much easier than all users going it.  And, unless you have some reason
to believe we're refusing to include reliable date information when we
get it, this should produce a more complete set of author dates much
more quickly and cheaply than any suit would.

John