[Foundation-l] Re: Hosting scans of the 1911 Britannica onWikimedia

Thu Nov 10 02:06:59 UTC 2005

Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>On 11/9/05, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote
>
> I'll give it a try. Can you get all the images, or just the books still in
>progress, or just the pages from the books still in progress that haven't
>yet been processed?
> Actually, I'll probably just wait until this stuff gets put somewhere on
>Wikimedia.
>  
>
Technically once a book has been sent formally to Project Gutenberg the 
images are scheduled for deletion, but I've been able to even get images 
to older book projects as well.  As far as scans of books that you are 
working on, you have to find the book project page itself.  You can also 
dig around for other books, but you have to do some real searching.

It may be much easier if we wait and put it on Commons or something 
similar when all is said and done.  The point I'm making is that the 
scans are technically public but obfuscated to keep from dragging their 
network connection down on Distributed Proofreaders.  There may be some 
scans that might be of use to people on Wikisource, including some books 
that have been scanned in that are in languages other than English.  The 
real question would be more if the Wikimedia Foundation wants those book 
scans and is willing to deal with the huge server and bandwidth issues 
of having those scans available.  The conversion from TIFF to PNG or 
other related issues are trivial in comparison.  Based on the type of 
people on Distributed Proofreading that I've met, getting legal 
permission to post the scans is trivial, particularly once the book has 
completed its proofreading rounds and DP doesn't need the scanned images 
anymore.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning