Yes, I take your point. However, much of the scanned material is subject to copyright, and the people who've invested in the scanning are often keen to get a return on their investment and not release it to us! The concept we were thinking about is linking with municipal archives, saying - we'll scan your records for you if you release them to us copyright-free afterwards. Not sure if it's a runner at the moment, which is why I'm asking the question to see what others have done.
Could you tell me more about the "transcription" tasks? Have we got access to any resources that are awaiting transcription?
Thanks
----- "John Vandenberg" jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
From: "John Vandenberg" jayvdb@gmail.com To: "Wikimedia Commons Discussion List" commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, 27 August, 2009 03:46:58 GMT +00:00 GMT Britain, Ireland, Portugal Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Digitisation equipment
On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 8:27 AM, Andrew Turveyandrewrturvey@googlemail.com wrote:
We had a discussion at a recent Wikimedia UK board meeting about potentially buying some digitisation equipment which could be used to generate content for the Wikimedia projects. This recent email to the EN-WP list sparked my interest.
Does anyone have any experience with equipment like this, and could you recommend anything? Any idea what the price range and quality typically is?
Also, is anyone else in the Wikimedia community currently doing this?
This came up on the Australian Wikimedia list.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaau-l/2009-August/002606.html
I think it is terribly inefficient for Wikimedians to start mass scanning projects while we have so few people engaging in transcription projects. Libraries have scanned millions of books, and there is no signs that they are going to stop. Commons and Wikisource should be mining and transcribing these books which are already scanned.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaau-l/2009-August/002611.html
-- John Vandenberg
Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
Andrew Turvey, 27/08/2009 16:20:
The concept we were thinking about is linking with municipal
archives, saying - we'll scan your records for you if you release them to us copyright-free afterwards. Not sure if it's a runner at the moment, which is why I'm asking the question to see what others have done.
Well, yes. I think that 100,000 € is the basic investment (see IFLA 2009).
Could you tell me more about the "transcription" tasks? Have we got access to any resources that are awaiting transcription?
Do you mean apart from 1,593,519 texts only on http://www.archive.org/details/texts ?
Nemo
On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 12:20 AM, Andrew Turveyandrewrturvey@googlemail.com wrote:
Yes, I take your point. However, much of the scanned material is subject to copyright, and the people who've invested in the scanning are often keen to get a return on their investment and not release it to us! The concept we were thinking about is linking with municipal archives, saying - we'll scan your records for you if you release them to us copyright-free afterwards. Not sure if it's a runner at the moment, which is why I'm asking the question to see what others have done.
Organise for these records to be donated to a commons-friendly library or archive, and let them do what they are good at. We are good a tasks that require lots of people.
There is a distinct lack of digitised works in languages other than English, and I can understand Wikimedia chapters taking a leading role in those countries.
Could you tell me more about the "transcription" tasks? Have we got access to any resources that are awaiting transcription?
Wikisource is the transcription project; there is an abundance of tasks, and not enough people. See my email:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaau-l/2009-August/002611.html
If you want to talk to a local, Charles Matthews is the most active Brit that I can think of quickly.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Charles_Matthews
Here are two very important texts which WMUK could push to completion:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:The_copyright_act,_1911,_annotated.djvu http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:A_treatise_upon_the_law_of_copyright.djv...
As far as I know, there is no complete etext of the original 1911 Copyright Act.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_1911
-- John Vandenberg