[Wikipedia-l] Buying public domain books

[Ray Saintonge]

Fred Bauder wrote:

>I could do this as I am always searching for books. This can cost a lot or a
>little, luck has a lot to do with it. Make a list and I can start looking
>then email likely purchases to Jimbo.
>
>One we could probably use and would be worth paying a bit for would be the
>Cambridge History of English and American Literature. It is up on Bartelsby
>at
>
A whole 14 vol. set of the 1931 reprint of the 1917 edition of the 
English Literature portion recently sold on eBay for $41.00!

A 15 vol. 1967 set is currently being offered with a $60.00 opening bid, 
but no takers.  I would not hesitate to bid that on the older version.

>Most of the really good public domain reference books are in the better old
>libraries such as Yale and Oxford and can be viewed there and an evaluation
>made.
>
>Fred
>
Luck is only part of it. You also need a nose for bargains, and 
sometimes a willingness to take risks.  When the best opportunities 
present themselves there is no time to thoroughly check things out at a 
major library.  Two of my recent purchases John Howard Brown's 1897 
"Cyclopædia of American Biographies" in 7 volumes for $25.00, and 
William Shaw's 2 volume1905 "Knights of England" (autographed) for 
$27.00.  The 1976 and 2000 reprints normally sell for about $100.00 when 
you can find one.

>>From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
>>Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] what to do with the money?
>>
>>Imran Ghory wrote:
>>
>>>Something else we could do is use the money to obtain public domain books
>>>(e.g. biographical encyclopedias) that can be scanned/ocred and used for
>>>creating basic articles in areas which wikipedia currently lacks coverage.
>>>
>>What would something like that cost, anyway?  My guess is that if
>>someone wanted to do this, the cost would be close to zero anyway, am
>>I wrong?
>>
 From a Wikisource perspective this is a useful idea, but buying these 
books should not be a central organization function.  It should be the 
contributors that do this since they are the one who will keep the books 
after they've been scanned.  I would be surprised if Wikimedia had any 
intent to start a rare and old book library.

Cost may not be the problem with this proposal.  Scanning and 
proofreading the OCR results is a long and tedious job that may not suit 
everybody's temperament.

Ec