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The Straight Story

(48,121 posts)
Wed Mar 27, 2013, 10:59 AM Mar 2013

A small thing you can do to help in spare time, without leaving the computer/home

I am posting this here because you can be part of the good news and help shut ins, the blind, etc with just a small portion of your time each day or week. For those who cannot get out or see well these things mean a lot. Even if you cannot help you might know someone who can so spread the word and be part of the good news!

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Site Concept
Distributed Proofreaders provides a web-based method to ease the conversion of Public Domain books into e-books. By dividing the workload into individual pages, many volunteers can work on a book at the same time, which significantly speeds up the creation process.

During proofreading, volunteers are presented with a scanned page image and the corresponding OCR text on a single web page. This allows the text to be easily compared to the image, proofread, and sent back to the site. A second volunteer is then presented with the first volunteer's work and the same page image, verifies and corrects the work as necessary, and submits it back to the site. The book then similarly progresses through two formatting rounds using the same web interface.

Once all the pages have completed these steps, a post-processor carefully assembles them into an e-book, optionally makes it available to interested parties for 'smooth reading', and submits it to the Project Gutenberg archive.

How You Can Help

Register with the site as a volunteer.
Read the introductory email you receive and the Beginning Proofreader's FAQ.
Confirm your registration, sign in, choose a project, and try proofreading a page or two!

http://www.pgdp.net/c/


***AND****

Volunteering for LibriVox

LibriVox volunteers read and record chapters of books in the public domain (books no longer under copyright), and make them available for free on the Internet. Practically, this means we record books published before 1923. All our recordings (including yours, if you volunteer for us) are also donated into the public domain.

We record books in all languages.

You do not need any prior experience to volunteer for LibriVox, nor do you need to audition or send us samples. All you need is your voice, some free software, your computer, and maybe an inexpensive microphone.

All LibriVox activity (book selection, project management, discussion, etc) happens on our Forum, and you’ll need to register there to join us. Our forum members are a friendly bunch, and questions will be answered there quickly (much more quickly than if you send us an email!).

We do suggest you read the document below, before registering and posting on the Forum, to get an idea of how everything works.

http://librivox.org/volunteer-for-librivox/

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A small thing you can do to help in spare time, without leaving the computer/home (Original Post) The Straight Story Mar 2013 OP
Cool! cyberswede Mar 2013 #1
Very, very cool. OneGrassRoot Mar 2013 #2
Gutenberg has been on my to-do list for forever Viva_La_Revolution Mar 2013 #3
That's great! LeftofObama Mar 2013 #4
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