Distributed Proofreaders (commonly abbreviated as DP or PGDP) is a web-based project that supports the development of e-texts for

Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital li ...

by allowing many people to work together in

proofreading Proofreading is the reading of a galley proof or an electronic copy of a publication to find and correct reproduction errors of text or art. Proofreading is the final step in the editorial cycle before publication. Professional Tradition ...

drafts of e-texts for errors. As of March 2021, the site had digitized 41,000 titles.

History

Distributed Proofreaders was founded by Charles Franks in 2000 as an independent site to assist

. Distributed Proofreaders became an official Project Gutenberg site in 2002. On 8 November 2002, Distributed Proofreaders was slashdotted, and more than 4,000 new members joined in one day, causing an influx of new proofreaders and software developers, which helped to increase the quantity and quality of e-text production. Distributed Proofreaders posted their 5,000th text to Project Gutenberg in October 2004, in March 2007, the 10,000th DP-produced e-text was posted to Project Gutenberg, in May 2009, the 15,000th DP-produced e-text was posted to Project Gutenberg, in April 2011, the 20,000th DP-produced e-text was posted to Project Gutenberg, and in July 2015, the 30,000th DP-produced e-text was posted to Project Gutenberg. DP-contributed e-texts comprised more than half of works in Project Gutenberg, . On 31 July 2006, the Distributed Proofreaders Foundation was formed to provide Distributed Proofreaders with its own legal entity and

not-for-profit A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

status. IRS approval of section 501(c)(3) status was granted retroactive to 7 April 2006.

Proofreading process

Public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because those rights have expired, ...

works, typically books with expired copyright, are scanned by volunteers, or sourced from digitization projects and the images are run through

optical character recognition Optical character recognition or optical character reader (OCR) is the electronic or mechanical conversion of images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document, a photo of a document, a sc ...

(OCR)

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

. Since OCR software is far from perfect, many errors often appear in the resulting text. To correct them, pages are made available to volunteers via the Internet; the original page image and the recognized text appear side by side. This process thereby distributes the time-consuming error-correction process, akin to

distributed computing A distributed system is a system whose components are located on different networked computers, which communicate and coordinate their actions by passing messages to one another from any system. Distributed computing is a field of computer sci ...

. Each page is proofread and formatted several times, and then a post-processor combines the pages and prepares the text for uploading to Project Gutenberg. Besides custom software created to support the project, DP also runs a forum and a wiki for project coordinators and participants.

Related projects

DP Europe

In January 2004, Distributed Proofreaders Europe started, hosted by

Project Rastko Project Rastko — Internet Library of Serb Culture ( sr, Пројекат Растко — Електронска библиотека српске културе, Projekat Rastko — Elektronska biblioteka srpske kulture) is a non-profit and no ...

, Serbia. This site had the ability to process text in

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...

UTF-8 UTF-8 is a variable-length character encoding used for electronic communication. Defined by the Unicode Standard, the name is derived from ''Unicode'' (or ''Universal Coded Character Set'') ''Transformation Format 8-bit''. UTF-8 is capable of ...

encoding. Books proofread centered on European culture, with a considerable proportion of non-English texts including Hebrew, Arabic, Urdu, and many others. , DP Europe had produced 787 e-texts, the last of these in November 2011. The original DP is sometimes referred to as "DP International" by members of DP Europe. However, DP servers are located in the United States, and therefore works must be cleared by Project Gutenberg as being in the

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because those rights have expired, ...

according to U.S.

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...

law before they can be proofread and eventually published at DP.

DP Canada

In December 2007, Distributed Proofreaders Canada launched to support the production of e-books for Project Gutenberg Canada and take advantage of shorter Canadian copyright terms. Although it was established by members of the original Distributed Proofreaders site, it is a separate entity. All its projects are posted to Faded Page, their book archive website. In addition, it supplies books to Project Gutenberg Canada (which launched on Canada Day 2007) and (where copyright laws are compatible) to the original Project Gutenberg. In addition to preserving Canadiana, DP Canada is notable because it is the first major effort to take advantage of Canada's copyright laws which may allow more works to be preserved. Unlike copyright law in some other countries, Canada has a "life plus 50" copyright term. This means that works by authors who died more than fifty years ago may be preserved in Canada, whereas in other parts of the world those works may not be distributed because they are still under copyright. Notable authors whose works may be preserved in Canada but not in other parts of the world include Clark Ashton Smith, Dashiell Hammett,

Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fic ...

Carl Jung Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, phil ...

, A. A. Milne, Dorothy Sayers,

Nevil Shute Nevil Shute Norway (17 January 189912 January 1960) was an English novelist and aeronautical engineer who spent his later years in Australia. He used his full name in his engineering career and Nevil Shute as his pen name, in order to protect ...

Walter de la Mare Walter John de la Mare (; 25 April 1873 – 22 June 1956) was an English poet, short story writer, and novelist. He is probably best remembered for his works for children, for his poem "The Listeners", and for a highly acclaimed selection of ...

, Sheila Kaye-Smith and Amy Carmichael.

Milestones

10,000th E-book

On 9 March 2007, Distributed Proofreaders announced the completion of more than 10,000 titles. In celebration, a collection of fifteen titles was published: * ''Slave Narratives, Oklahoma'' (A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves) by the U.S. Work Projects Administration (English) * ''Eighth annual report of the Bureau of ethnology''. (1891 N 08 / 1886–1887) edited by

John Wesley Powell John Wesley Powell (March 24, 1834 – September 23, 1902) was an American geologist, U.S. Army soldier, explorer of the American West, professor at Illinois Wesleyan University, and director of major scientific and cultural institutions. He ...

(English) * ''R. Caldecott's First Collection of Pictures and Songs'' by Randolph Caldecott llustrator(English) * ''Como atravessei Àfrica'' (Volume II) by Serpa Pinto (Portuguese) * ''Triplanetary'' by E. E. "Doc" Smith (English) * ''Heidi'' by Johanna Spyri (English) * ''Heimatlos'' by Johanna Spyri (German) * October 27, 1920 issue of ''

Punch Punch commonly refers to: * Punch (combat), a strike made using the hand closed into a fist * Punch (drink), a wide assortment of drinks, non-alcoholic or alcoholic, generally containing fruit or fruit juice Punch may also refer to: Places * Pun ...

'' (English) * ''Sylva, or, A Discourse of Forest-Trees'' by

John Evelyn John Evelyn (31 October 162027 February 1706) was an English writer, landowner, gardener, courtier and minor government official, who is now best known as a diarist. He was a founding Fellow of the Royal Society. John Evelyn's diary, or ...

(English) * ''Encyclopedia of Needlework'' by Therese de Dillmont (English) * ''The annals of the Cakchiquels'' by Francisco Ernantez Arana (

fl. ''Floruit'' (; abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for "they flourished") denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indicatin ...

1582), translated and edited by Daniel G. Brinton (1837–1899) (English with Central American Indian) * ''The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties'' (1921) by Richard Runciman Terry (1864–1938) (English) * ''Le marchand de Venise'' by

William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...

, translated by

François Guizot François Pierre Guillaume Guizot (; 4 October 1787 – 12 September 1874) was a French historian, orator, and statesman. Guizot was a dominant figure in French politics prior to the Revolution of 1848. A conservative liberal who opposed the ...

(French) * ''Agriculture for beginners'', Rev. ed. by Charles William Burkett (English) * ''Species Plantarum'' (Part 1) by

Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, ...

(Carl von Linné) (Latin)

20,000th E-book

On April 10, 2011, the 20,000th book milestone was celebrated as a group release of bilingual books: * ''The Renaissance in Italy–Italian Literature, Vol 1'', John Addington Symonds (English with Italian) * ''Märchen und Erzählungen für Anfänger; erster Teil'', H. A. Guerber (German with English) * ''Gedichte und Sprüche'', Walther von der Vogelweide (Middle High German (ca. 1050-1500) with German) * ''Studien und Plaudereien im Vaterland'', Sigmon Martin Stern (German with English) * ''Caos del Triperuno'',

Teofilo Folengo Teofilo Folengo () (8 November 14919 December 1544), who wrote under the pseudonym of Merlino Coccajo or Merlinus Cocaius in Latin, was one of the principal Italian macaronic poets. Biography Folengo was born of noble parentage at Cipada near Ma ...

(Italian with Latin) * ''Niederländische Volkslieder'',

Hoffmann von Fallersleben August Heinrich Hoffmann (, calling himself von Fallersleben, after his hometown; 2 April 179819 January 1874) was a German poet. He is best known for writing "Das Lied der Deutschen", whose third stanza is now the national anthem of Germany, an ...

(German with Dutch) * ''A "San Francisco"'',

Salvatore Di Giacomo Salvatore Di Giacomo (12 March 1860 – 5 April 1934) was an Italian poet, songwriter, playwright and fascist, one of the signatories to the Manifesto of the Fascist Intellectuals. Di Giacomo is credited as being one of those responsible for ...

(Italian with Neapolitan) * ''O' voto'', Salvatore Di Giacomo (Italian with Neapolitan) * ''De Latino sine Flexione'' & ''Principio de Permanentia'',

Giuseppe Peano Giuseppe Peano (; ; 27 August 1858 – 20 April 1932) was an Italian mathematician and glottologist. The author of over 200 books and papers, he was a founder of mathematical logic and set theory, to which he contributed much notation. The sta ...

(1858-1932) (Latin with Latino sine Flexione) * ''Cappiddazzu paga tuttu—Nino Martoglio'', Luigi Pirandello (Italian with Sicilian) * ''The International Auxiliary Language Esperanto'', George Cox (English with Esperanto) * ''Lusitania: canti popolari portoghesi'',

Ettore Toci Ettore is a given name, the Italian version of Hector. People *Ettore Arrigoni degli Oddi (1867–1942), Italian naturalist *Ettore Bassi (born 1970), Italian actor and television presenter *Ettore Bastianini (1922–1967), Italian opera singer *Et ...

(Italian with French)

30,000th E-book

On 7 July 2015, the 30,000th book milestone was celebrated with a group of thirty texts. One was numbered 30,000: *''Graded literature readers - Fourth book'', editors: Harry Pratt Judson and Ida C. Bender, 1900

40,000th E-book

On 10 October 2020, the 40,000th book milestone was celebrated with a group of 4 volumes of a book. One was numbered 40,000: *''

London Labour and the London Poor ''London Labour and the London Poor'' is a work of Victorian journalism by Henry Mayhew. In the 1840s, he observed, documented and described the state of working people in London for a series of articles in a newspaper, the ''Morning Chronicle'', ...

'',

Henry Mayhew Henry Mayhew (25 November 1812 – 25 July 1887) was an English journalist, playwright, and advocate of reform. He was one of the co-founders of the satirical magazine ''Punch'' in 1841, and was the magazine's joint editor, with Mark Lemon, in ...

References

External links

*{{Official website Collaborative projects Crowdsourcing Distributed computing projects Human-based computation Internet properties established in 2000 Mass digitization Proofreading