E-Book Museum at Library of Congress?

David H. Rothman writes "E-books and other digital publications in the U.K. are about to go into a national archive, and in fact the Brits and others have even shown an interest in the e-book technology of yore. Goodness knows, as some have pointed out, we already have enough virtual e-book museums--unwittingly created by the march of technology. But how about an International Electronic Book Museum in the Real World, ideally the Library of Congress? Before Luddites and crypto-Luddites keel over at the thought, they should keep in mind that the technology is already several decades old and that it would be helpful to collect the artifacts in a systematic way before it's too late. More at TeleRead."

Re:my only complaint...

[farnz]

What about the hardware to run it on? What about the OS? Is an eBook that only runs on 48K ZX Spectrums with Microdrives now good enough? Can we even read the media?

The advantage of an open specification for the format (unencrypted PDF would work, for example) is that provided I can access the data, and provided I have a copy of the specification, I can read the books. If I don't have the specification in an alternative format, I'm screwed. If the reader requires (say) a PC without PCI to work, and I don't have a spec, I'm screwed.

The second is more likely than the first, so I'd rather have a format with an open spec.

Library of Congress is working on it

[spotteddog]

The Library of Congress is already working on a program for preserving "digitally born" documents. Look at http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/

*disclaimer: I currently work at the Library of Congress, but not on this project.

Re:Library of Congress is working on it

[DavidRothman]

No NIH syndrome, I'd hope. Keep in mind that the E-Book Museum proposal [teleread.org] focuses on the artifacts that the public can see right there in person and on the Net--the machines and the media, as well as videos of old e-book references in movies, on TV, and so on. That's a different issue from content preservation per se. What's more, the TeleRead item already includes a link to http://www.digitalpreservation.gov--please don't think I've denied LOC credit for existing activities. What I have in mind, of course, would make the preservation job easier by reducing the chance that LOC would be out of luck because it could not find the right machines to display dead formats and emulation was tricky. Let's hope, of course, that a nonproprietary standard e-book format arrives soon, but if nothing else, as I've noted in the TeleRead item, the E-Book Museum could help cope with the present mess. Please take a look at what I wrote for TeleRead, not just the quick summary. And by the way, I'm right across the Potomac River in Alexandria, and, though I realize you don't deal with e-books at LOC, you or colleagues are welcome to reach me at 703-370-6540. Thanks! David Rothman, for TeleRead.org

Public domain E-Book museum needs your help!

[Anonymous Coward]

Distributed Proofreaders [pgdp.net] is the main source of public domain electronic books. It is part of Project Gutenberg [gutenberg.net]. DP consists of thousands of volunteers doing hundreds of books each month, and some of our math books, for which DP is using LaTeX. Thus, the project needs savvy (La)TeX folk to correct the OCRed texts.

Thus, if you have a spare ten minutes now and then, you can make a significant contribution to public domain and mathematics. The finished e-books are free, downloadable, and computer-searchable. Sign up here! [pgdp.net]

The work is done through a web interface that lets you compare a scanned page image against OCRed text, and make any necessary changes to the text. The interface works with most browsers, from IE and Netscape to Mozilla and Opera. (I have proofread a couple pages myself, and can vouch for it being straightforward.) You can do one page whenever you have time or a hundred a day -- it's up to you. No commitments, no schedules.

If you'd like a change from mathematics, there are plenty of other books to do: from classics to pot-boilers, in English, French, German, Dutch,
Finnish, Swedish, etc.

It's mainly NOT about e-books!

[philipx]

If you read the article, it's actually mainly NOT about books but rather about the other digital publications: zines, online-newspapers, et all.

I think this is very useful as a large number of online versions of paper zines & newspapers have far more resources than their dead-tree counter part. Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times to name the few. So far, there was no central and/or organized way to capture this information.

I also liked the bit: "This new legislation means that a vital part of the nation's heritage will be safe and accessible as an important resource for businesses and education users in the future," said Mole.