Hi Lars and Gaurav,
I would say that the first things to be scanned would be, as Gaurav said, the list of requested texts. I think this not necessarily because they are the most important, but the most likely to be worked on and become immediately useful.
Max Klein Wikipedia in Residence kleinm@oclc.org +17074787023
-----Original Message----- From: Gaurav Vaidya [mailto:gaurav@ggvaidya.com] Sent: Sunday, July 22, 2012 12:51 PM To: discussion list for Wikisource,the free library Cc: Wikimedia Chapters cultural partners coordination Subject: Re: [Wikisource-l] Which books to scan to support Wikipedia
Hey Lars,
On 20-Jul-2012, at 7:50 PM, Lars Aronsson wrote:
The way the collaboration is set up, the room is provided by the University of Toronto, but the equipment and staff belong to the Internet Archive. The participating libraries around Canada decide which books to digitize and pay a small fee to the Internet Archive for scanning them.
That sounds awesome! If the book is related to biodiversity, though, it might be easier to ask the Biodiversity Heritage Library to scan it for you -- they take requests (see http://biodiversitylibrary.org/Feedback.aspx), have access to multiple libraries across the US, support multiple languages, and all their content is mirrored to the Internet Archive. I don't know if they'd be as fast as the Internet Archive in Toronto, though! Full disclosure: I'm doing a project with the BHL over the summer.
This opens up an interesting opportunity. If we want a particular book to be digitized, and we can find it in the library catalogs of the University of Toronto, it might be possible (in theory, at least) for us to present this wish and perhaps provide the money needed, either directly from the Wikimedia Foundation, or its chapters. Canada is a country with many immigrants and the library system has books in many languages.
This brings me to the question: Which books would be the most important to scan, to help Wikipedia?
Here are some possibilities from the English Wikisource: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Requested_texts -- that page also has interwiki links to the other Wikisources as well.
All the best with your wishlist!
cheers, Gaurav