e-Book Requests and Begging (Public Domain Books Only!)

[Govinda]

I’m loking for “Charlotte's Web” by E. B. White. I’d appreciate if somebody could upload it, in case it’s a public domain book.
THX!

[NatCh]

That one seems to have been copyrighted in 1952, so I think you're out of luck on it, Govinda.

[Govinda]

Ok NatCh, THX for the information.
I've bought the paper edition in spanish, but i'd love to have the english Sony Reader version.
How did you find that info so quickly?

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by Govinda

How did you find that info so quickly?

Search Inside at Amazon.com: looked at the copyright page

You're welcome, Govinda.

[Turtle Woman]

I would like anything by Frances Hodgson Burnett, especially A Little Princess, and the Anne of Green Gables series. Thank you to all you wonderful geeks! Oh, and Jane Eyre, please!

[Dr. Drib]

"Anne of Green Gables" is now available. Hope you enjoy it. Let me know if there are "problems" with it.

Don

[HarryT]

Jane Eyre, as requested. Enjoy!

BTW, why not have a go at some of these yourself? It's great fun to create books, and very easy to do!

[GKL]

I am a professional librarian. I just discovered this site late last week after receiving my Sony Reader. Before you all get to far along on this project, I would like to propose some suggestions that may make your efforts of greater value. In preparing the books, why not include the Library of Congress information, at least in listing the title and author. For example, this is the full record for Don Quixote:

LC Control No.: 10002921
Type of Material: Book (Print, Microform, Electronic, etc.)
Personal Name: Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de, 1547-1616.
Uniform Title: Don Quixote. English. Part 1
Main Title: The first part of the delightful history of the most ingenious knight Don Quixote of the Mancha / by Miguel de Cervantes ; translated by Thomas Shelton ; with introductions and notes.
Published/Created: New York P. F. Collier, c1909.
Related Names: Shelton, Thomas, fl. 1612.
Related Titles: Don Quixote.
Description: 545 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.
Notes: On spine: Don Quixote, part 1.
Series: Harvard classics ; no. 14
LC Classification: PQ6329 .A2 1909
LC Copy: AC1 .A4 Copy 2.
Other System No.: (OCoLC)4247445

I specifically chose this record because it refers to the edition found in the Harvard Classics. Note, the uniform title is "Don Quixote. English. Part 1" and the author is Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de. Using a uniform system will add only a few moments if it is done at the time the ebook is created. If it is decided to do this later, it will be a Herculean task if thousands of books are otherwise completed.

You might want to have a page near the beginning that is simply a copy of the LC full record.

I would also give an indication near the beginning (after the title page and before the text) which acknowledges the source of the e-text (e.g., "lrf version created from The Project Gutenberg EBook of The History of Don Quixote, Vol. I., Part 1.
by Miguel de Cervantes available at http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5903" followed by the bibliographic record from Project Gutenberg, in this case:

"Bibliographic Record [help] Creator Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de, 1547-1616
Illustrator Doré, Gustave, 1832-1883
Translator Ormsby, John, 1829-1895
Title The History of Don Quixote, Volume 1, Part 01
Note Illustrated.
Language English
LoC Class PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
EText-No. 5903
Release Date 2004-07-27
Copyright Status Not copyrighted in the United States. If you live elsewhere check the laws of your country before downloading this ebook."

Your efforts will be of more universal value if this information is included and may make it easier for libraries to include records of your collection (including links to it) in their online catalogs, making it more readily findable and accessible to a much broader audience.

[HarryT]

Where would one obtain that information? I've never heard of half of what you quote. I'm afraid.

My initial impression is that it all sounds a bit "heavy". We're just a bunch of Sony Reader fans sharing a few books for fun. It's really not our aim to create anything too fancy.

What do other people think?

[Robert Marquard]

For referencing Project Gutenberg better read about that on http://www.gutenberg.org
It is either the complete legalese from PG or no reference at all.

[GKL]

It actually is rather easy:

When you download the files from Project Gutenberg, I assume you do so from a page such as the following:

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5903

I simply cut and pasted the bibliographic record in my previous message from that page.

Here is another example of a text from the Harvard Classics series located at PG:

Bibliographic Record [help] Creator Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
Title Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series)
Language English
EText-No. 13674
Release Date 2004-10-08
Copyright Status Not copyrighted in the United States. If you live elsewhere check the laws of your country before downloading this ebook.

See http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/13674

Note that the title is "Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series)" In titling the work for your project, you could simply use "Chronicle and Romance," noting that it came from the Harvard Classic Series below the title or on a subsequent page. The authors, likewise, should be "Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed," not Harvard Classics. Indeed, I would think it best to break out each work from that volume as separate works, giving each of them their own titles and authors.

As to the LC record, you can simple visit http://catalog.loc.gov/, do a search for the edition you are working on, and copy and paste the bibliographic record into your ebook.

Another advantage of doing some of this is that perhaps you can induce a much wider group of editors to create the etexts. Your tutorial is excellent. If you can get some librarians interested, they'll have the 20,000+ volumes in the PG collection completed in a year or two, if not sooner. This is what we do for a living. Many of us have graduate degrees in this.

Alternatively, with the editors' permission, librarians might be induced to add the bibliographic records to the otherwise completed works before final submission.

Your efforts are magnificent. I would just like to see your final product obtain a much wider recognition and use. Why limit your work product to those who, like me, happen upon them in an effort to discover what free content is available to the Sony Reader? This should be in library catalogs everywhere. (By the way, the individual e-editor or e-editors of each work should also include that in the editions they create. E.g., "Sony Reader version created by HarryT from the etext available at Project Gutenberg . . . ."

Once a format was settled on, doing all this would not add more than five minutes to creating each work.

[GKL]

For referencing Project Gutenberg better read about that on http://www.gutenberg.org
It is either the complete legalese from PG or no reference at all.

Then I would include it all. Indeed, my initial impression was that all the PG legalese should be retained, on separate pages. They did a ton of work on those etext and really should be credited for it in any works derived from it, even if they do not demand such credit.

[Dr. Drib]

I used to work at a university library, so I can understand where the writer is coming from regarding the suggestions. However, I feel that - if all this information was in the exact same place (say at the end of Gutenburg or whatever) - then I would just copy/past and create a link and have it on the last page.

BUT.....what do we do about creating our "own" books, such as compilations and collections, etc. that do not exist in book form?

So, I would have to say, respectfully, that I'm not in favor of such a plan, as it seems like an additional load of work hunting down the material and then installing this info somewhere in the ebook.

Thanks,
Don

[HarryT]

I agree with you, Don. The reason for imposing a standard naming convention for the threads is so that we can easily search by book title or author using the forum search facilities. My personal view is that this is really all we need. That's all I ever use when searching for books, whether it be on PG or Amazon.

I'm certainly not going to impose anything on anyone else here, by the way. I'm speaking now as an individual, not as the forum moderator.

[GKL]

I understand.

Then I have a follow-up. As a site policy, would you all have an objection to libraries creating item records linking to your e-copies on this site and/or downloading the e-copies and making them available through our own servers with appropriate attribution to this project (along with PG or other sources) and adding certain bibliographic records to the copies which were downloaded and stored on the library servers.